The Mayfair Affair by Tracy Grant

visitor, often at odd hours, despite the revelations of three months ago. Or perhaps because of them.
    The fire was still banked in the library. Malcolm poked it up, while Suzanne lit a lamp and a brace of candles. O'Roarke remained quiet. To do him credit, he still displayed a certain amount of caution in their house. Malcolm crossed to the drinks trolley, splashed whisky into three glasses, gave one to Suzanne, and put the other in O'Roarke's hand. "Talk."
    O'Roarke took a sip of whisky. "Trenchard and I go back some time. To Paris in the eighties."
    Suzanne dropped down on the sofa. "Why does everything seem to go back to Paris in the eighties?"
    O'Roarke flashed a faint smile at her. "So many people in our world are still reacting to events of the Revolution one way and another."
    "Was that what connected you and Trenchard?" Malcolm seated himself beside Suzanne. "The events of the Revolution?"
    "Not at first. We quarreled over a woman, as it happens. Not one I was involved with. It was shortly after your birth. I was—"
    "Loyal to my mother?" Malcolm was surprised at the lack of irony in his own voice.
    "In a manner of speaking. This woman was a young actress, Louise Doret. She'd become entangled with Trenchard and was having difficulties freeing herself."
    "Was he violent?" Malcolm asked.
    O'Roarke's brows lifted. "Yes, as it happens. How did you know?"
    "He appears to have not caviled at hitting his wife."
    O'Roarke's mouth tightened. "That type is dangerous. I helped Louise and the young actor who was her lover escape to Italy. Oddly enough I had assistance from Robert Jenkinson. Lord Liverpool now."
    "The prime minister?" Suzanne asked in disbelief.
    Raoul smiled. "He was just a young man of nineteen acquiring some Continental polish. Even then we were hardly political allies, but he was a great admirer of Louise. He came to me to offer help arranging travel papers for her through connections of his father's. Perhaps the only time we've ever seen eye to eye. Though I've always thought part of the reason I was eventually able to return to British society after the uprising in ninety-eight was owed his influence. Trenchard wasn't best pleased with either of us, to say the least. He tried to challenge me. I told him I saw no reason to risk my life and violate my principles to satisfy his antiquated notions of honor."
    Malcolm found himself smiling. "I don't imagine that went over well."
    "No. A series of unpleasant altercations followed whenever we encountered each other. Like many young men in his set, Trenchard continued to come over to Paris after the Revolution. I was looking into the Elsinore League with your mother."
    "You knew Trenchard was one of its members?"
    "Yes, that was what had first thrown me in his orbit. He doesn't seem to have been at the heart of the intrigues that so absorbed your fath—Alistair and Dewhurst in those days, but he was part of their circle."
    "Did he know you were investigating them?"
    "I'm not sure. I like to pride myself that he didn't. And I tend to think that if the League had been on to me I'd have known it. Trenchard took various petty revenges on me, none more than a nuisance. I confess I underestimated him. Woefully."
    "What did he do?" Suzanne asked. Her throat sounded tight.
    "He denounced me to the Committee of Public Safety as a dangerous subversive."
    Malcolm heard the sharp slice of his wife's indrawn breath while his memory flashed back to his mother's white face when she slit the seal on a letter from Paris a quarter-century ago. He looked across the library at the man he now knew was his father. "That was how you ended up in Les Carmes?"
    Raoul nodded. "It probably would have happened eventually, without Trenchard's intervention. I was far from an enemy of the Revolution, but I wasn't happy with where it had gone, and I wasn't the sort to keep silent. But Trenchard certainly hurried things along."
    "And almost sent you to the guillotine."
    "If Robespierre hadn't