Paul was absolutely fuming as he followed Rachel and her man into the suite right next to his own. Humiliation had turned to rage as he stood gawping at her, this woman he had come to adore, this woman he had until now believed to be his, and his alone. That she had declined to join him for dinner was not in itself so very strange; she needed time to herself, and always had done, and he did not begrudge her a soak in the bath with a nice book while he wandered the streets of this city he loved so well. Paul had enjoyed a fine meal and purchased a treat for his beloved before making his way back to the hotel, knowing that the time she'd spent alone would have left Rachel refreshed and more receptive to any amorous advances he might choose to make. With thoughts of wrapping her in his arms and pressing her back against the silk sheets of their bed swirling through his mind he had walked with a light and untroubled step, but then he had opened the door to their suite and found it quite unoccupied. Her mobile and room key were missing, and she had not left so much as a note to tell him where he had gone.
That was perhaps the most frustrating thing about Rachel, the way she did whatever she pleased without a thought for him. She knew everything about him, the place where he had spent his childhood, the names of his university friends, his politics and his telly preferences. She knew his favorite wine and his favorite opera, as he had quite willingly shared every piece of himself with her. Rachel, though, had not been nearly as forthcoming. She remained a mystery, and he took great delight in solving it, solving her, unraveling the enigma of this woman who shared his bed. At first glance she was not the most exciting of women; she was lovely but not heart-stoppingly beautiful, reticent and quiet, passionate about the literature she shared with her students and very little else. No one seemed to look twice at her, but she had captured his attention most completely. In the beginning, he had been rather charmed by her, in truth, had entertained himself wondering what on earth she had to hide.
Now such thoughts did not amuse him. He was tired of ferreting out her secrets one at a time; he wanted answers, and he wanted them now. Studying the pair of them together, the way Rachel kept so close to her man, the way he seemed so protective of her, offered some less than reassuring insights; knowing how difficult it had been for him to woo her, knowing how hesitant she was to engage in any sort of physical contact in public told him plainly that this man he'd caught her snogging in the elevator was no stranger. Rachel would never have allowed such familiarity from someone she did not already know intimately. Who was he to her, this portly, balding man, this man whose heavily lined face bespoke his age, proclaimed him far too old and far too tired for a woman as lovely as Rachel? This man whose jumper she wore, Paul realized as they all made their way into the room next door.
It could hardly be coincidence, he thought grimly, that he and Rachel were staying in the room next door to her paramour. Had she arranged this entirely, he wondered, arranged to sneak off for a rendezvous with a man who looked more like her father than her lover, deliberately spurning Paul and heaping her affections on this unlikely bastard instead? The man had a lover of his own, it would seem, an elegant lady who was of an age with him, who appeared to be a much more appropriate match for him than Rachel. He felt a bit bad for this woman, another victim in this bizarre pantomime, but his anger did leave much room for pity in his heart.
That she had lied, that she had manipulated him for her own ends, that she had humiliated him in front of other people, that she had for so long withheld her affections from him and now gave them to a stranger without a second thought; the whole situation was completely unbearable, and Paul felt himself teetering right on the brink of losing his tenuous self-control, all the vitriol he longed to let loose choking him with every breath. The room they'd ventured into was identical to the one Paul had only recently vacated; the table, the chairs, the balcony, the neatly made bed. They were tidy people, Rachel's lover and his companion, unlike Rachel who had strewn her possessions from one end of their room to the other, despite the fact that they had hardly been in Paris for any time at all. He spared the briefest of moments to investigate their surroundings and then returned to the matter at hand with a single-minded focus.
"What the bloody hell is going on here, Rachel?" he asked. He took a step towards her, but she shrank back from him, wrapping her arms around her waist and hanging her head while her man stood just behind her with a dark look upon his face and the other woman paced by the other side of the bed, all but vibrating with distress.
"It isn't what it looks like," Rachel muttered, staring at her shoes.
Paul barked out an incredulous laugh; he'd caught them snogging in the elevator, and she was wearing the man's jumper, the purpling mark on the side of her neck and the disarray of her hair giving evidence of their salacious activities during the brief time she'd been gone from his side. The sight of that mark, the realization of just what it meant - that they hadn't only been snogging, that while he had been obviously enjoying dinner alone she had been tangled up somewhere with this man, that she had allowed him to mark her when she had insisted that Paul not be allowed the same liberty - left him reeling, feeling as if all at once every assumption he had made about this woman had been proven entirely wrong.
"As eager as I am to hear your explanation," the other woman said coolly, "first I'd quite like to know how you and Harry came to be...acquainted with one another."
It was a question Paul was likewise interested to hear the answer to, and he watched the pair of them expectantly.
"Rebecca-" this Harry began to protest, but Rachel stopped him, reached out to place her hand upon his arm in a placating sort of way, and they shared a look then, as if with a single glance they could communicate their thoughts to one another. Harry's shoulders slumped and Rachel drew herself up, standing tall as she prepared to speak, looking squarely at Rebecca and refusing to share a moment for Paul.
"You work for the Home Office, don't you, Rebecca?" Rachel asked.
Paul was fighting the urge to stomp his foot in frustration; he couldn't see what one thing had to do with the other, and he was so lost in his own grief, his own anger that he could not spare a moment to wonder how strange it was, that he had gotten mixed up with some government flunkie and her red-faced lover, that he did not even consider how it was that Rachel had come to possess such information.
"My name is Ruth Evershed," Rachel continued.
The effect of that declaration upon Rebecca was immediate and extreme. Her face paled and she recoiled as if she'd been struck, her eyes suddenly a little wild around the edges as her gaze bounced from Harry to Rachel and back again. It made no sense to Paul, who was reeling for altogether different reasons; why had she given a false name? Or was Ruth her true name, and Rachel no more than a fiction? And if she were this Ruth, why had she lied to him? He felt a bit sick, and in truth wanted nothing more than to collapse into the nearest chair, but so long as Rachel and her man remained standing he was determined to remain on his feet as well.
"You're joking," Rebecca said, her voice somewhat hoarse. "Have you been in contact with her all this time, Harry? The HS will have your head on a pike-"
"I had no idea she was going to be here, Rebecca," Harry answered wearily, rubbing at his eyes for a moment.
"Does someone want to explain this to me?" Paul asked acidly. He hated being kept in the dark almost as much as he hated sounding like a petulant child, and while it seemed that Rebecca had enough information to answer her questions they had not even scratched the surface of his own inquiries. What did the Home Secretary have to do with anything? Just who the bloody hell were these people?
"You've been sleeping with a spy," Rebecca told him bitterly, "and the two of them have been in love with each other for a decade. Oh, don't try to deny it, Harry. Everybody knows!"
At those words Paul sank onto the end of the bed, staring up at them, feeling as if the entire world had shifted beneath his feet. It was true, he realized, taking in the agonized expression on Ruth's face; those eyes, so brilliantly blue, eyes that had captured his interest from the moment he first saw her, betrayed her every thought.
"Oh, I don't think it's been a whole decade," Harry said drily, making a pathetic attempt at diffusing the tension, but Rebecca just rolled her eyes and Ruth raised an eyebrow at him as if to say really?
"I really didn't know he'd be here," Ruth said slowly, turning from Harry and back to Rebecca. "But then I heard you talking out on the balcony, and…"
"And you had to speak to him," Rebecca finished with a sigh. The way she said it, as if it were the most logical thing in the world, as if she had already given up the fight, chilled Paul to the core.
"How did you know-" Harry started to ask, though Rebecca interrupted him at once.
"People talk, Harry. A lot of the documents are sealed, but I saw enough. I wanted to get to know you better and since you weren't talking...anyway. I suppose you two have come to some sort of agreement, then?" she gestured vaguely towards them, a world of innuendo contained in the flippant wave of her hand. They did not answer, but then they did not really need to, for in their faces Paul could see the truth. Rebecca was right; whatever they had been when they first arrived in the city it was rather painfully obvious that Ruth and Harry were now acting as one unit.
"You don't have to answer that," she said, gathering up her handbag. "I suppose it's about time you got your act together. I am going to go downstairs, and I am going to have several more glasses of wine, and when I come back, I want you both to be gone."
"Will you be all right?" Harry asked. His tone was gentle, but he was not arguing with her; it seemed that gathering his belongings and leaving the hotel that very instant was quite in line with his own desires. It was a different sort of cruelty, to so blithely allow a woman who had until a few minutes prior been his lover to depart from his life without a moment's consideration, to so blatantly demonstrate his lack of feelings for her even while ostensibly asking after her well being. No one seemed to spare a moment for Paul, and he'd had quite enough of being ignored.
"How can you ask her that?" Paul demanded. "You brought her here, and you've...you've…" he couldn't quite finish the sentence, but then he supposed he didn't really need to; everyone in that room knew exactly what had done. What he and Ruth had done together.
"I'll be fine, Harry," Rebecca said, shooting a pitying glance at Paul. "I can make my own way home."
And just like that she left with her head held high, her dignity intact. The closing of the door behind her was a quiet, definitive sound of a book coming to an abrupt conclusion.
You've been sleeping with a spy, he heard her words once more, and he faced the two people across from him with a heart full of rage.
"You lied to me," he said as he turned once more to Ruth, his voice low but no less full of heat. "All this time, you've been lying to me. About your name, where you come from...have you been spying at the university?"
"As if there's anything in Bradford worth the effort," Harry muttered, but Ruth shot him a dangerous look and he quieted at once.
"No," she told Paul gently. "I've retired. I was just trying to start my life over. But it didn't really work."
"Because you're in love with him?"
And for once, she didn't hesitate.
"Yes," she said simply.
"You never really wanted anything to do with me, did you, Rachel? Or Ruth, or whatever your name is."
"Paul," she started to take a step towards him, her hands raised in a placating sort of gesture, but he wanted none of her tenderness, not now when his heart was aching and his ego was smarting.
"Don't," he spat, and she recoiled at once.
There was no way for him to preserve his pride, he saw. Rebecca had left of her own volition, but in so doing she had put him in an untenable position. Left alone in this room, with a woman he thought he adored, a woman who had just proved that everything he thought he knew about her was a lie, a woman who was by her own admission in love with another man, he would have no choice but to leave with his tail tucked between his legs. He had been right all along, it seemed, that she had secrets to hide. He could not fathom the depth of that deception; whatever course her life had charted, he would never learn the truth of it. She was, if possible, even more hopelessly intriguing now, and if she had not wounded him so deeply he might have pressed for answers about her work, might have been eager to learn of her adventures, her misdeeds, to learn the story behind her connection to Harry. As it was, however, he was too lost in himself to ponder those questions, and it seemed that neither Ruth nor Harry was willing to give them.
"To hell with you both," he muttered. "Rebecca has the right idea. I'm going to have a drink, and then I never want to see you again."
Perhaps the most telling thing was that Ruth did not try to stop him; she remained in her position, standing with her man on the other side of the room, watching Paul walk out of her life. If he were being honest with himself he would have admitted that he wanted her to stop him, but she did not, and so he left her, slammed the door behind him and went to wait for the lifts.
To hell with them both, he thought grimly.