Free Leopard in Exile by Andre Norton, Rosemary Edghill

Talleyrand its secrets."
    Misbourne gazed at the quizzing-glass for a moment, men put it in the drawer of his desk. "But I know
    that you will find some good in all this. We have found our mole, at least. It is Rutledge."
    "Have we?" said Wessex. "Somehow it seems all too pat: Hanaper's suicide, Warltawk's arrival,
    Rutledge's departure. We are meant to think that, certainly—yet if the Marquess were a traitor in French
    pay, he would hardly have omitted to take so valuable a bargaining chip as the Mirror Rose with him.
    And Warltawk is no French agent: he's a Jacobite, if anything, and lives to amuse himself. I cannot see
    him conniving with le Pope Noir to any purpose. This is a ruse. Let me follow Lord Rutledge to
    France—"
    "No." Misbourne spoke decisively. "You are too well known to be of any use to me in France. Paris
    Station will have to do what it can to apprehend Rutledge… and we to mend the damage he has done."
    "You're right of course," Wessex said smoothly. He turned a bland countenance to Misbourne, but
    behind that facade his thoughts were spinning. Rutledge made a plausible mole, but all of Wessex's
    instincts told him that the Marquess had not betrayed them… or if he had, it was not in that way. There
    was still a traitor, somewhere within these walls. And he must find and exonerate Rutledge to prove it.
    "If that is all, my lord, then I pray you will hold me excused. I am thought to be giving an entertainment
    this evening, and it would look well if I were actually to attend."
    Misbourne smiled dutifully, but the thought that Rutledge had been the pawn of France for two decades
    hit him hard. He waved dismissal, but when Wessex had turned and reached the door, he spoke again.
    "When you are through playing, come and see me, Your Grace. I have a mission in mind for you."
    "What sort of mission?" Wessex could not keep himself from asking.
    "An execution."

Chapter Three
    The Game of Kings
    (Paris, June 1807)
    T he Palais de l'Homme held public rooms, private rooms, and those that were simply secret. In one of
    those rooms that did not exist, two men sat talking.
    Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord—the butcher with the face of an angel and the manners of
    Satan himself—had been born into the French nobility half a century before and had been nearly as
    oppressed by it as any impoverished peasant The Revolution had freed him from the duties of a priest
    and allowed him the chance for revenge upon the parents who had disinherited him because of his
    lameness.
    Since the days when Napoleon was First Consul, Talleyrand had consolidated his own power, a power
    he meant to be more enduring than that of either Church or State. Napoleon had made himself Master of
    Europe, but if Napoleon were to fall tomorrow, Talleyrand would survive. Without his master's
    knowledge he had treated secretly with both England and Russia. His reach was as long as his ambition
    was vast, and he feared nothing.
    Not even the man who sat before him.
    "So. As I promised, the Emperor has made you Governor of Louisianne. All he cares about is the New
    World gold that will keep the Grand Army in the field and buy the loyalty of his agents in Spain. You are
    to provide it any way you can—including taking the Spanish treasure ships, if you can do so without
    implicating France. You may do whatever you like with the colonists—they are a surly and ungrateful
    people, as much Spanish as French. And now, d'Charenton… what of your promise to me?"
    The man who sat opposite him was some fifteen years his senior. He had been born into a noble
    Provençal family, and served both in the Army and then the government before his… proclivities…
    became known. The King had reprieved him, but it was the Revolution which had freed the Marquis de
    Sade from confinement in the Bastille. When the People had cast out the Holy Church, those forces
    which the Church had kept at bay had been freed to flourish. In the atmosphere of libertine