"I confess your cousin has me quite at a disadvantage." Raoul took a sip from his tankard of stout. He and Malcolm had of one accord turned into a tavern when they left Mivart's and sought refuge at a table with high-backed benches, where they could talk in relative privacy. A buzz of midday chatter provided good cover. The smell of ale and aged cheddar and roast pies drifted in the air. "And for all his seeming candor, I'm still not sure how much of what we saw is a pose."
"You truly didn't suspect?" Malcolm asked.
Raoul shook his head. "We were working for opposite sides. Which Raimundo still doesn't know. Presumably. After what we just learned about my nephew, I wouldn't take anything for granted."
"Had you heard about the Spanish ambassador and this high-ranking English lady?"
"No. But that's not necessarily surprising. My Spanish contacts are mostly expatriates, not those at the embassy. And Fanny's a more likely source for beau monde gossip than I am."
"So Raimundo could be telling the truth about that."
"He could. But if he were going to make up a story to account for his presence here—"
"That would be a likely one."
"Quite. Difficult to prove that someone isn't having a secret love affair."
"He was Annabel Larimer's lover." Malcolm pushed his own tankard about on the scarred wood of the table. "And an agent who worked with her. And the papers that supposedly hold the secret of Annabel's parentage were supposedly concealed in a painting that came from his father. I can't connect the pieces, but I also can't believe it's coincidence."
"Hard to see my brother willingly giving up a family treasure," Raoul said. "Especially to someone British."
"We don't know that he sold it or gave it to Glenister," Malcolm pointed out. "He could have sold it to someone Spanish or given it away, and then it could have been looted at Vitoria and found its way into Glenister's hands through an enterprising soldier turned art dealer."
"True." Raoul turned his tankard between his hands. "But I have a hard time seeing my brother selling it or giving it away to a Spaniard either. Yet if it had been stolen, you'd think he'd have admitted that to Raimundo. There was obviously something about its loss he didn't want to discuss."
"I need to ask Glenister where he got the painting." Malcolm took a drink of stout. It was a complex brew with a hint of a spice he couldn't identify. He looked at Raoul for a moment. "Raimundo poses a number of risks."
Raoul gave a wry smile. "If he already knows the truth about me, he apparently hasn't revealed it. If he doesn't know it and does learn it, there's a limit to what he can do with the information in Britain."
"In Britain." Malcolm shot a look at his father. It had been a luxury in so many ways to have him here for the past months. Raoul may have stayed in Britain for time with his youngest child, but it had also given Malcolm precious time with his father. Time in which he didn't have to worry about what might be happening to Raoul in the increasingly complicated landscape of Bourbon Spain.
"The risk of discovery's always been there," Raoul said. "This just sharpens it a bit. Enough to keep me wary."
"I hope to God you're always wary."
Raoul grinned. "Trust me, I am. Positively cautious in my old age."
"I don't know what's more laughable—that you're old or that you're cautious." Malcolm frowned at a knothole in the table. "What would your brother do if he knew the truth about your work in Spain during the war?"
"Despair of me even more, I imagine." Raoul reached for his tankard and took a sip. "You've never asked much about my family."
"You've never seemed to want to speak much of them." Malcolm regarded his father in the light of the swaying oil lamps that illumined the tavern. "And I suppose—they're important to me to the degree they're important to you."
Raoul wiped a trace of stout from the side of his tankard. "I'd hardly say they're unimportant to me. But it seems so very long ago. My brother and I were estranged, or at least distant, before you were born, as young as I was then. He's fifteen years older than I am."
"You have different mothers." Malcolm hadn't asked a lot of questions about Raoul's family, but he'd taken note of the few things Raoul had mentioned.
Raoul nodded. "My father's first wife was a Spanish noblewoman. They had two surviving children, my brother Patrico and my sister Luisa. My father divided his time between Spain and Ireland, as O'Roarkes have done since the time of Elizabeth."
This part of the story was familiar. Raoul's ancestor, Neil O'Roarke, had gone to fight in Spain in the late sixteenth century and had married a Spanish noblewoman. He'd acquired property in Spain through his marriage and from the grateful monarch, but he had also retained property in Ireland. Malcolm had known the story long before he'd known that Neil O'Roarke and his Spanish bride were his own ancestors as well.
"It was on one of his trips to Ireland that my father, by then widowed, met my mother," Raoul continued. "By the time they married, my sister Luisa was married herself, and my brother Patrico was at school in Spain." He paused, his gaze fixed on the thick mullioned panes of the windows as he recast the past. "As I've told you, my mother was an only child. She was an orphan with a comfortable inheritance, living with an aunt and uncle, and the family were all telling her she needed to marry. She had a quick mind and a love of books, but few outlets for her creativity. She found Ireland confining. I think my father appealed to her as someone different, someone from the wider world."
"As we've heard about Annabel Larimer and her husband."
"Quite. Or my own first marriage. And as with Margaret and me, it was more or less a disaster from the start. My father had very definite ideas about what a wife should be. My mother stretched her wings more and more when she was free of her uncle and aunt's house. I think my father looked round and wondered whom he'd married. And she wondered how she could have found him interesting."
"Not an easy household to grow up in."
Raoul gave a faint smile. "It was far easier than growing up with Arabella and Alistair, I imagine. I remember quarrels when I was young, but mostly my mother kept me out of it. They didn't have ideological differences to the extent Margaret and I did, at least. My father tried to stay out of politics, though he thought my mother's ideas, and some of the writers and thinkers she associated with, were dangerous. She was Anglo-Irish, and they agreed to raise me Protestant—ironically, to preserve my ability to stand for Parliament if I ever wanted to." Raoul gave a dry smile. "Not that religion meant much to my mother, and it meant even less to me. She took to spending more and more time in Ireland or London or Paris. My father retreated to Spain. I lived with her and saw my father occasionally, when we went to Spain or when he visited. I saw my brother and sister even less. My father died when I was ten." His fingers tightened round the pewter of his tankard. "My mother died when I was fifteen, as you know. Unexpectedly, of a chill that settled in her lungs. I was at school, and by the time they sent for me I barely got a chance to see her."
He paused. It was the most detail he'd ever given Malcolm about his mother's death, and Malcolm could tell what it cost him. "I'm sorry," Malcolm said. "It's never easy to lose a parent, and particularly hard when one is young."
"You weren't much older when you lost Arabella. I at least had her through most of my childhood, though at fifteen I was far less grown up than I thought at the time. She left me a comfortable independence, as her own fortune had been settled on me. Patrico became my guardian. He was busy with Father's estates and had married recently and had a young family. He was quite content to pay my school fees and let me go my own way. And also content for me to go to the University of Paris. He was less pleased with the articles I began writing and the people I began spending time with. We had a blistering quarrel when I went to Spain the summer after my first year at university. I had all the arrogance of the young who think every idea they've discovered is theirs alone, and Patrico had all worry of a young father and landowner. We quarreled violently. He called me a bad influence on his children, and I assured him I wouldn't inflict myself on them further. I went back to Paris. He continued to put money in my bank account regularly and to pay my university fees. When I came of age, he wrote me a quite civil letter wishing me well and explaining the details of the inheritance that was now mine. At that point I had a son, though I could hardly tell him about you. After I'd been imprisoned in the Terror, I went to see him in Spain. He said my ideas were mad as ever, but we managed a more civil exchange. He sent his congratulations on my marriage to Margaret, and I think hoped it would, in his mind, steady me. I'm sure he was disappointed in the results. I stayed away after the Irish Uprising. I can only imagine what he thought of me. But I did see him when I was working in Spain during the war. He told me he was doing his damnedest to stay out of things. I assured him I'd stay out of his way. But by that time Raimundo had gone to work with a group of guerrilleros. Patrico was worried about him, said he was as hotheaded as I'd once been, that if I was a father myself I'd understand. To which, of course, I couldn't reply. But when he asked if I'd talk to Raimundo and keep an eye on him, of course I said I would. Though I said he was a grown man and I couldn't try to persuade him to do other than what he thought he must. Patrico said if I had a son I might try to persuade him from following in my own footsteps." Raoul shot a look at Malcolm. "Which is probably true."
"Persuade, not stop."
"Probably. I believe in letting people make their own decisions. But I'd have tried quite hard to persuade you. As I will with any of my younger children or grandchildren, should the situation arise."
Malcolm thought of tiny Clara and then of Emily, Colin, and Jessica. "Dear God."
"We have a few years before we have to worry about it. In any case, not being able to say any of this to Patrico, I told him that of course I'd do whatever I could for Raimundo."
"Who was fighting on the opposite side."
"As was my own son," Raoul said in an even voice.
"You gave me some quite sensible advice about being an agent, as I recall." How often since he'd learned the truth had Malcolm recast those conversations during the war, first with anger, then with appreciation. "Advice that could apply whichever side one was on."
"I hope so. It was meant that way." Raoul sat back on the bench. "I wasn't on as close terms with Raimundo, but I met him once or twice. I could hardly claim to a relationship when we hadn't had one for the first almost three decades of his life, but he was quite civil. I've seen him from time to time when I've been in Spain. And I had no clue to the man he revealed himself as today."
"You didn't realize he's more like you than like your brother."
"He's like himself. And a rather remarkable person."
"Which complicates things. I need to see Glenister. And I still have to talk to Kitty." Malcolm drew a breath. Someone had lit a pipe. The smoke stung his lungs and curled like fog in the air. "How much did you know about Kitty and me eight years ago?"
"About your affair?" Raoul asked. "I didn't know anything. Not while it was going on. You were discreet."
Malcolm took a drink of stout. His hand was not quite steady. "I'm relieved to hear it. Though, since when has anyone's being discreet stopped you from gathering intelligence?"
"I wouldn't—there are limits to my spying, hard as that may be to believe."
"I believe it."
Raoul gave one of his quick smiles that were at once a deflection and a window into his soul. "I didn't even know you'd gone on the mission with her to Don Ramón Castella. I was in Andalusia at the time."
"But you knew Kitty was an agent."
"I'd worked with her cousin Victor in my—assumed role as an ally of the guerrilleros. I met her first before she married Ashford. When she was still based with the guerrilleros. I spent a night in the camp to liase with Victor and some others. Kitty had just returned from a mission. I didn't hear all of the report she gave, but I heard enough to be very impressed." Raoul took a drink of stout. "I did hear rumors of the duel. You were remarkably discreet there as well, but those things are harder to hush up. Hearing that, knowing you and what it would take for you to fight a duel—I could guess at something close to truth." He drew a breath like sandpaper. "One of the many times I've been sorry I couldn't speak to you openly as a father."
"It's not exactly the sort of thing one shares easily with a parent, however open the relationship."
"No, I suppose not. I don't think I could ever have had such discussion with my father. I'm not sure about my mother—she was gone before I was old enough to have anything of the sort to discuss."
"I wish I'd known her."
"So do I. She'd have been proud of you. Perhaps more so than of me, though she was amazingly tolerant. And I suppose you could say she could understand compromise, her marriage being one. I think perhaps I'd have confided in her about Arabella, if I could have. Not easily, but at some point. Perhaps when I learned I was going to be a father."
It was said in an easy tone that let Malcolm leave it at that or make more of it if he wished.
"You should know the rest," Malcolm said. "I told Mel the night we first saw Kitty."
"That's a bit different. There's no need—"
"Yes, there is. You need to know because Kitty's an agent and this investigation involves Spain and impacts all of us, especially you. But more than that—I want to tell you because you're my father, and it's the devil of a tangle, and I could use your advice."
"Well, then." Raoul gave a faint smile. "That's a bit different."
Malcolm signaled for a potboy to refill their tankards and told his father about his affair with Kitty, their disagreement over the information about Don Ramón Castella's son, and her pregnancy. "I wish—" Malcolm hesitated, because having a father was still in some ways so odd. "I wish I could have talked to you. Even though you were on opposite sides, I expect you'd have seen her point about giving up the information being the pragmatic thing to do. The thing for an agent to do."
"I confess, I'm not sure."
"You've always been—"
"Less quick to see the human cost than you? True enough."
"I was going to say more focused on your objective."
"It can amount to much the same thing. But however I might have handled the situation myself, I know what it is to go over a decision again and again."
Malcolm nodded. "And I really wish I could have talked to you when I learned Kitty was pregnant. I don't think I handled it very well."
"I don't know that there's an easy way to handle it. Certainly if there is, I didn't find it."
"You managed to be a father to me," Malcolm said. "I'm not sure I would have been able to do so for Kitty's and my child if it had been born."
"Different circumstances, perhaps." Raoul took a drink of stout and watched him for a moment. "One can be very happy in the life one has and still wonder about what didn't come to pass. I mostly regret that I ever married Margaret at all—for her sake and my own. But I do wonder sometimes about the child we lost. Who she or he might have been."
Malcolm nodded. He reached for his tankard and stared into it for a moment. "Mel thinks I proposed to her partly to make it up to Kitty and the baby we lost."
"Yes, I can see her seeing it that way. At least at first. I don't think it changes where you are now."
"No. And I don't think she's right. But perhaps the whole thing did make me consider what it might mean to be a father. I'd never really thought about it before."
"My dear Malcolm. You were very young."
"You were younger."
"And I hadn't thought about it before either."
"I hope to God Colin doesn't—"
"Yes," Raoul said with feeling. "So do I."
"I loved her," Malcolm said. The words came out roughly, yet it was a relief to speak them, as he hadn't to anyone so far. "If she'd been willing to come away with me—I'd have stayed with her. I think it would have lasted, at least on my side. But I don't think—I don't think she was my Arabella. I don't think I'd have kept going back to her like that. I don't think it would have stopped me from loving Mélanie. Not if I'd been free. And God help me, perhaps even if I hadn't been."
Raoul nodded, looked for a moment as if he might have been about to say more, but then remained quiet.
"I wish I could make Mel understand," Malcolm said.
"She'll work it out. It's a surprise—not that you had a past, but meeting that past. Knowing you, she'd have realized what Kitty must have meant to you even before she saw you together. Probably better, all things considered, for her to get to know Kitty."
"Yes. Quite." It shouldn't bother him. He knew what was between him and Mel. It was so much less fragile than it had been. This was certainly something they could withstand.
Raoul was watching him. "I don't think she'd ever reproach you, Malcolm."
"No, I know that. I think I'm just afraid—that she won't tell me if she's bothered. And a part of me can't help wondering—You have to admit, a lot of people I'm close to have proved to have secrets."
Raoul's mouth twisted. "A fair point. For what it's worth, I'm quite certain Kitty wasn't a double."
"Thank God. I think I could handle it as a lover at this point, but as an agent I'm not sure I'd ever recover." He tossed down the last of his second tankard, started to push his way up from the bench, then sat back and looked at his father. "Has it been hard? Not seeing your family?"
Raoul stared into the dregs of his tankard. "We were disconnected before we were estranged." As with the other rare occasions when he talked about his feelings, he seemed to be choosing his words with painstaking care. "So much of the time I've told myself I'm better off not having ties. That being alone was essential to the work I was doing. Lately I've learned that's not the case. Whatever the risk. I don't believe blood counts for a great deal, but my family are part of what formed me. And so, part of what I pass on to you and Emily and Clara. And Colin and Jessica."
Malcolm stared across the table at his father. Close as they'd grown, this was a window into Raoul he'd never had before. "I didn't think about it until Colin. That line of connection from one generation to the next. From the people who formed us to the people we nurture. That's really not a question of biology. You'd have been part of that for me even if you weren't my father. You'd have been connected to Colin through me even if you weren't Colin's father."
"You're Colin's father," Raoul said.
"Talking about biology not mattering. Yes, I am. And you are as well." Malcolm sat back on the bench. "Raimundo seems as though he might welcome a closer connection."
"So he does." Raoul swallowed the last of his tankard. "Assuming we can trust anything about him at all."