The Orchid Affair

by Lauren Willig

  André bent over the table. Some papers had fallen to the floor, wedged between the chair and the wall. One was a page from a Bulletin, the same bulletins that were delivered to him at the Prefecture, from which the master bulletin, the one that went officially to the First Consul and unofficially to Fouché, were prepared. There was only one problem. This Bulletin was dated as of the following week.

  André held it wordlessly out to Delaroche.

  Delaroche ignored it. He was rooting beneath the meat pie, like a particularly grubby sort of animal. A badger? André had always lived in towns. Natural philosophy might be part of a gentleman’s education, but he was weak on wildlife.

  “Ha!” said Delaroche, holding something aloft.

  At first glance, the paper hardly merited his enthusiasm. Taking it by two fingers, André turned it gingerly, first this way, then that. It was a piece of a letter, one that had been deliberately been folded, ripped, and then folded and ripped again.

  “. . . with the Prince in Paris . . . ,” the fragment began.

  “Prince,” said André. “A code name?”

  “Or no code at all,” said Delaroche.

  He sounded distinctly smug. Fouché had been warning the First Consul of a Royalist threat for months, a tune to which the First Consul had consistently turned a deaf ear. A Bourbon on the loose in Paris would make even Bonaparte sit up and take notice.

  “You believe we have a prince of the blood on the loose in Paris.”

  Delaroche’s lips twisted derisively. “So it would seem to say.”

  “Yes, seem,” agreed André. All right, if they were going to play that game. “The Comte d’Artois would be the logical choice.”

  While it was the dead King’s other brother, the Comte de Provence, who had been crowned Louis XVIII, the younger brother, Artois, had been the more active in fomenting schemes for the reinstatement of the Bourbon line.

  “Ha!” said Delaroche. “The Comte d’Artois is too careful of his own skin to come gadding off to Paris. According to my sources, he is very happily ensconced on South Audley Street”—Delaroche pronounced the foreign name with distaste—“entertaining the heir to the English throne at games of whist.”

  “Likely,” agreed André. “Highly likely. My sources also place the count in London. I doubt Provence would come himself. He’s too precious for them to risk. Unless . . .”

  “Unless?”

  “Unless Artois wanted to make the way clear for himself by compromising Provence.”

  Despite the fact that it came from André, the idea of a double cross appealed to Delaroche. Reluctantly, he dismissed the idea. “No. They band together, these royal spawn. It must be someone else. Not Artois. Not Provence. But who?”

  Why did André have a feeling he was going to tell him?

  “The count has a son,” pronounced Delaroche, as though he had just done Descartes one better.

  “Two of them, in fact,” supplied André. It wasn’t exactly privileged information.

  Delaroche paced back and forth, his boots leaving blots on the land-lady’s clean floor. “The Duc d’Angoulême has been seen in attendance on his uncle, the man they call Louis XVIII. No. I refer to the younger son, the Duc de Berry.”

  “The Duc de Berry?” André’s lips quirked derisively. “The duke is a known womanizer and bon vivant, just like his father before him. Would he leave the comforts of London for a dubious expedition to Paris?”

  “When a throne lies in the balance, there are few comforts a man is not willing to forego.”

  “An excellent aphorism, but not exactly pertinent to the current situation.” Lifting Cadoudal’s wineglass, André tapped the base against the table. “It is de Berry’s uncle’s throne, not his own. His own situation would change little. And my sources still place him in London.”

  “Hmph,” said Delaroche.

  Lifting the glass, André examined the wine as if searching for lost pearls. “Did you happen to think that this proliferation of papers might not be a little too fortuitous?”

  Admittedly, one fragment and one dropped bulletin was hardly a proliferation, but hyperbole was a recognized rhetorical technique. In other words, it generally worked.

  André could tell Delaroche’s attention was caught. The cold eyes fastened on him like a lizard sizing up a rat for its gastronomic potential. “Explain.”

  “These papers under the bed. Cadoudal is a crafty old devil. What if he seeks to shake us off his trail by sending us off in search of a will-o’-the-wisp? While we go hunting mythical princes through the back alleys of Paris, Cadoudal and his confederates have their way clear.”

  Delaroche’s nose twitched as though he had sniffed something gone bad. “You believe this is a ruse.”

  “A clever one,” clarified André. “A clever one, but a ruse nonetheless. Can you imagine the Duc de Berry scurrying around Paris on the off chance of mustering forces in his uncle’s favor? He would be more of a liability than an asset. And Cadoudal must know it.”

  Delaroche’s fingers drummed against the desk, once, then twice, like the drumroll summoning a man to the ax. “Berry is a prince of the blood.”

  “Qu’un sang impur,” murmured André, quoting the anthem that had spurred so many troops into battle against the royal forces, the same anthem that had been Cadoudal’s cue to escape. “Be that as it may, it does seem telling that this is the first word we have had as to his presence. Querelle said nothing of the kind. He spoke only of Cadoudal and Pichegru and a traitor in our own military ranks. Nor has anything about a man answering de Berry’s description come through the Prefecture. I would have known.”

  Delaroche acknowledged André’s competence in that regard with an almost imperceptible flicker of his lids.

  “It would be clever,” Delaroche acknowledged grudgingly. “Cadoudal has shown himself cleverer than we had realized before. But the possibility of a prince of the blood in Paris cannot be ignored—will-o’-the-wisp though it might be. The gates of Paris will be closed and all vehicles searched. Fouché cannot do anything less.” He perked up a bit at the prospect. There was nothing like a bit of prospective search and seizure to improve a man’s day. At least, if that man was a mad megalomaniac.

  “For how long will Parisians put up with that?” André asked quietly. The city was already restless, the quixotic population of Paris ever ready to shift their allegiances based on the grievance of the moment. Bonaparte had never been less popular. A lockdown of the city could be spark to tinder.

  That, however, didn’t concern Delaroche.

  Delaroche smiled at him, revealing yellowing teeth. “For as long as it takes,” he said complacently. “If either Cadoudal or our prince attempts to leave the city, they will be found.”

  Chapter 13

  Having satisfied themselves that the room contained no further items of interest, Delaroche and André went their separate ways, Delaroche to lay his own intricate plans, André to write up his report.

  He would be wanted at the Prefecture, he knew. Not necessarily by the Prefect, but by Fouché, who would expect André to monitor the questioning of Cadoudal’s manservant, not so much for the edification of the Ministry as for that of Fouché. André reported directly to Fouché; Dubois, the Prefect, didn’t.

  It was going to be another long night.

  André directed the carriage to drop him at the Hôtel de Bac, instructing the coachman to be ready to depart again within the half hour. If he was to spend the night at the Prefecture, he could at least have a change of linen.

  “Did Daubier leave any message for me?” he asked Jean as he came in.

  Jean spit in negation.

  Fair enough. He would see Daubier next Wednesday, for the monthly meeting of the gathering of the artists. Daubier, who, it appeared, had once dandled André’s governess upon his knee.

  Now, there was an image.

  Shaking his head, André found himself making his way not to his own rooms, but to the suite given over to the chi
ldren. Terrifying to think that such an insubstantial thing, one life—his—stood between his children and desolation.

  A fire crackled in the schoolroom hearth when he entered, but the children weren’t there. He could hear their voices through the door in the far wall, the one that led to the nursery. From the sounds of it, Jeannette was scrubbing away the debris of the day, complaining bitterly about the durable nature of ink on skin.

  In the schoolroom, there was only Mlle. Griscogne, her head bent over a book. Her hair was pulled back, revealing the nape of her neck as she leaned forward over her book.

  It made her, thought André, seem surprisingly vulnerable, with the short wisps of hair dark against the paler skin beneath. Or maybe it only seemed so now that he had seen her without her usual armor, surprised into humanity.

  That armor was off now. She was entirely absorbed in her reading, her hands braced on either side of the book, leaning forward as though intent on absorbing the words with her whole body rather than just her eyes.

  Was it Aesop’s Fables? Mlle. Griscogne’s arm blocked his view, but he could see that this book was smaller and thinner. The cover was red rather than blue. It was older, too, the leather worn off along the edges.

  “What are you reading?” he asked.

  “Sir!” Slamming the book shut, Mlle. Griscogne twisted around. Her cheeks were flushed, warm with either embarrassment or the wind.

  “Is it a romance?” He had trouble picturing his professionally prim governess wallowing in gothic fantasies. On the other hand, it appeared that little about his governess was as it seemed. Michel de Griscogne’s little girl, indeed.

  “I leave those to Gabrielle.” Mlle. Griscogne kept her hand pressed protectively to the cover of the book. “Were you looking for Gabrielle and Pierre-André? If you wanted them, the children are in the nursery.”

  That was just what he had wanted, but André paused for a moment. “Why didn’t you tell me that you were the daughter of one of the foremost sculptors of our generation?”

  “And a beautiful woman who made beautiful poetry,” she reminded him.

  “Daubier is nothing if not exuberant in his descriptions,” André agreed. “But that doesn’t answer the question.”

  She lifted her hands in the universal gesture of negation. “It didn’t seem relevant to my employment. You were employing me, not my parents.”

  André’s gaze dropped to the book on the desk, the gold curlicues outlining the name of the volume and the author. Good Lord, where had that come from? Memory stirred, of Julie, sitting in Père Beniet’s garden, the apple tree in bloom above them and the sun slanting through the leaves, coffee and iced cakes on a small stone table, as he read aloud to her from the poems of Chiara di Veneti.

  Chiara of Venice.

  What had Daubier called his governess’ mother? Chiaretta? My mother was Venetian, Mlle. Griscogne had said. Chiaretta of Venice.

  Following his gaze, Mlle. Griscogne made an abortive grab for the book. “I didn’t mean to pry,” she said quickly. “Gabrielle brought the book down. I thought—”

  André interrupted her. “Your mother was Chiara di Veneti?”

  He still couldn’t quite get his mind around it. Those lush, sensual verses of love had been written by Mlle. Griscogne’s mother?

  “It might be good for her to—what?”

  “This. You.” André tapped a finger against the cover of the book, the elaborate curls that framed the author’s name. “You are Chiara di Veneti’s daughter.”

  Mlle. Griscogne bit her lip. “You say it as though it were strange.”

  Strange? It was inconceivable. “You don’t know how many times I read those poems. They were—”

  “Awe-inspiring?” she provided. “Groundbreaking? Life-changing?”

  The words sounded obscurely familiar, but André couldn’t quite place why. “All of that. What in the devil are you doing as a governess?”

  Mlle. Griscogne turned away from him, busying herself picking up Pierre-André’s discarded toy soldiers. “They were my mother’s poems, not mine. One can’t eat a memory. I had to get my living somehow.”

  There was a wooden box open on the floor. Picking it up, André held it out to the governess. With a nod of thanks, she dropped the soldiers into it. “How old were you when they died?”

  “Sixteen,” she said crisply, closing the lid on the toy soldiers. “Old enough.”

  Considerably older than his children, but still. What would Gabrielle do in a similar situation? The very thought of it made the sweat start beneath André’s arms, the prickling sweat of fear.

  “Was there no one who would take you in?”

  Mlle. Griscogne’s lips lifted slightly at the corners. For a moment, he could see her as she had been in Daubier’s painting all those years ago, the girl with the finch, wide-eyed and alive with possibility. “Monsieur Daubier just offered,” she said.

  “Now?”

  She nodded.

  “A bit late, isn’t he?” said André, trying not to be annoyed.

  Mlle. Griscogne scanned the rug for stray soldiers. “It was a kind impulse.”

  “Depriving me of my governess?”

  His children’s governess, technically. Despite the fact that she had lived under his roof for more than a month now, that was all he had known of her, that she was a governess, that she wore gray, that she came well recommended. He had never imagined that she might be the daughter of a poetess, or the girl with the finch—because he had never bothered to ask. But for that chance encounter with Daubier, he would never have known.

  It was, as she had pointed out, not exactly relevant to her employment, but André couldn’t help but feel that it was relevant all the same.

  She seemed less formidable, somehow, and not just because their earlier encounter had knocked her hair loose. He remembered the feeling of warm flesh beneath his fingers, the curve of her back beneath his hand, not made of steel but of skin and bone.

  On impulse, André asked, “Did you have a Christian name, in this past life of yours?”

  Mlle. Griscogne bent down to pick up a cavalry horse, the mane missing. “A name, but not a very Christian one. They called me Laura.”

  “After Petrarch’s muse?” It made sense for one poet to nod to another.

  Mlle. Griscogne bedded the horse down among its fellows. “They were thinking more of the laurel crown,” she said wryly. “The coronet of victors and the artist’s reward. I think they hoped it would encourage me to garner laurels.” She busied herself sorting soldiers. “They were disappointed.”

  “Julie gave Gabrielle a paintbrush before she could talk.” André wasn’t sure where the words had come from, they just came out.

  “What happened?”

  “She chewed it,” said André dryly.

  He surprised a laugh out of her, a proper laugh. André found himself laughing with her, although at the time it had been anything but comical. He wasn’t quite sure what Julie had expected from a teething child, but she had taken it as a personal affront.

  “Monsieur Daubier was always terribly kind about my daubs,” Mlle. Griscogne said reminiscently. “But I could tell he was thinking, Poor girl, her paintings will never hang in the Royal Academy.”

  André chuckled, as he was meant to, but he wondered about the little girl she had been. “Did you want them to?”

  The question seemed to catch her off guard. “No,” she said, after a moment. “Having grown up with two artists, I’m not sure I would want to be one. It isn’t a very orderly life.”

  That was one way of putting it.

  He looked around the schoolroom, all the books in their places, all the toys in order. The only thing out of place was the scarlet volume of poetry, a relic from another time and place: her childhood, his youth.

  “Once a month, I hold a salon of sorts,” André said abruptly. “It’s nothing terribly formal, mostly artists of various sorts. Painters and poets and writers.”

  “How n
ice,” she said politely.

  André clasped his hands behind his back. “It all started when Ju—when my wife was alive. I’ve kept it up since, more out of habit than anything else.”

  Mlle. Griscogne was all that was professional. “Would you like the children to come down and recite? I’ve been teaching them excerpts from Racine and Corneille. Gabrielle does a lovely job with the Count’s speech from Le Cid.”

  “No!” André said quickly. That was all he needed, to draw more attention to the presence of his children. “No. It wouldn’t be appropriate. My guests are not always the most . . . circumspect of people.”

  “You mean they drink and curse,” said Mlle. Griscogne calmly. Her matter-of-fact manner made an odd contrast with her demure façade. But then, she had grown up with Chiara di Veneti.

  “They also recite love poetry.” André nodded towards the red book on the table. “Instructive for the children, but not for a few more years, I think.”

  “If you want me to make sure they stay out of the way, that can be easily arranged,” she said. “The house is certainly large enough to keep them well out of your way.”

  He was making a muddle of this. “No, no,” he said abstractedly. “Jeannette can manage that.”

  Mlle. Griscogne looked at him quizzically. “Then . . . do you need assistance with the refreshments?”

  André took a deep breath, feeling like a green boy asking a girl into a garden. Absurd, since there was no garden. And Mlle. Griscogne was certainly no girl. There was no need to make a to-do about a simple invitation.

  “What I meant to ask was whether you would like to come. To attend. As a guest.”

  She looked genuinely confused. “You’re inviting me? To attend?”

  “That generally is what ‘guest’ means.” André retreated towards the nursery, speaking rapidly. “The invitation is there, should you choose to accept it. It certainly isn’t a requirement of your job. I thought Daubier might be glad of a chance to see you, that’s all. And you might find other acquaintances of your parents there.”

  Stopping abruptly at the door of the nursery, André shrugged. “I leave it to you. It’s your decision whether you want to attend or not.”