The Study of Seduction (Sinful Suitors, #2)(42)

Durand led Edwin into an office, probably the one he’d been using while the ambassador was in France. Opening a box, Durand offered him a cigar, which Edwin refused. He didn’t want to smoke, eat, or drink with the man. He just wanted him out of Clarissa’s life.

After lighting the cigar, Durand puffed on it a moment. “Have a seat.”

“I’d rather stand. I won’t be long.”

“As you wish.” The count leaned against the desk. “We need to discuss Lady Clarissa.”

“We do, indeed. And I’ll make this simple. She’s my fiancée. I want you to stop plaguing her.”

“I’m not plaguing her. I’m merely reminding her of our suitability for one another.”

Edwin stared him down. “She isn’t taking the hint very well. Nor am I. So I don’t want to see you anywhere near her again.”

“Or you’ll do what?” Durand cocked up one eyebrow. “In my position, I’m immune to any attempt to curb my actions. As I’m sure you know.”

“Nobody is entirely immune, even you.”

The count smirked at him. “You’d be surprised. France is in tumult now. No one there will concern themselves with the frivolous accusations of a young woman who’s being very respectably courted by a nobleman of my stature.”

“Respectably? That’s what you call dogging her steps, accosting her continually, spying on her home?”

“I should like to see you try to repeat those claims to anyone else. They would say that you are overreacting. That I am a well-respected diplomat, who would have no cause to trouble a lady. That yours are merely the rants of a jealous British earl having trouble securing his place as her suitor.”

Edwin gritted his teeth. “Let them say whatever they want. I have sufficient consequence to make my voice heeded.”

“Not sufficient enough that I can’t take it away at a moment’s notice.” Durand blew out some smoke. “All I need do is expose your father’s secrets.”

That sent unease curling through Edwin’s insides. “My father had no secrets.” None of any importance, anyway.

Yes, Father had been a member of a private opium den, which Edwin had discovered when he’d been forced to track down his father after Mother’s death. But that had been fifteen years and several French ambassadors ago. Durand couldn’t possibly know anything about it. And even if he did, Father had been dead quite some time. It would hardly matter to anyone that the man had occasionally indulged in opium-pipe smoking.

The count pushed away from the desk to walk over to a cabinet. “Don’t tell me you didn’t know about your father’s actions during the war.”

The war? “What actions?” Edwin said snidely. “His sitting in Parliament? His occasional gambling? His attendance at the theater?”

“I’m speaking of your father’s spying for France.”

The accusation hit Edwin like a sledgehammer. What the devil? Durand was daft. Granted, Edwin’s great-grandmother had been French and his family had distant relations in Paris, but Father had been thoroughly English. He would never have betrayed his country.

“That’s a bald-faced lie,” Edwin said coolly. “But a clever one, since you know there’s no way to prove or disprove your claims.”

The feral glitter in Durand’s eyes sent a shaft of ice down Edwin’s spine. “Ah, but there is.” Durand unlocked and opened the topmost drawer, searched through it until he found a file, then handed it to Edwin and closed the drawer.

Edwin stood staring at the file for a moment, his heart pounding in his chest. God, how could it be? His father had never been much engaged with his family, but Edwin had always assumed it was because he was a cold fish, incapable of caring. Or because of the slow, awful disintegration of his marriage.

Not this. Edwin couldn’t believe it. He wouldn’t.

“Look inside,” Durand said, lounging against the cabinet. “And in case you consider tossing the papers in the fire over there, you should know that they represent only part of your father’s reports.”

Reports. Oh, God. With a sinking feeling of dread, Edwin opened the file to find, in his father’s own handwriting, pages and pages of notes. He choked down alarm and began to scan them systematically.

The further he read, the more his stomach roiled. Every report began with a letter to a Frenchman named Aubert and contained a series of notes detailing information his father had gleaned at the opium den.

Apparently, certain British naval and army officers had enjoyed indulging from time to time in the odd Chinese practice of smoking opium. On those occasions, they’d inadvertently let slip bits about strategies of the war in France and the Peninsula. Father had then pieced them together into these reports.

There were crudely drawn maps, troop movement sketches, gossip about where Wellington intended to strike next. It was a damning set of documents, indeed.

No, how could this be? “Where did you get these?” Edwin demanded.

Durand shrugged. “They’ve been in our files for years. Our spy Aubert passed them on to the embassy after the war, and we kept them, in case we needed something else from your father.”

“In other words, needed something with which to blackmail him,” Edwin said tersely.

The acrid scent of cigar smoke swirled between them as Durand took another puff. “Or his son.”