The Orchid Affair

by Lauren Willig

He wasn’t asleep. The old artist sat on the side of the cot, huddled into his clothes. His festive clothes of two nights before seemed incongruous against the bleak stone walls. Daubier himself appeared to have shrunk within them; his gold-trimmed coat hung loosely from his shoulders as he hunched over his knees, his white hair hanging limp about his face.

  “Antoine Daubier?” André snapped. He didn’t like himself for it, but it had to be done.

  Daubier’s lack of reaction was more alarming than any reaction would have been. He roused himself, but slowly, by increments, like a duck rustling its feathers. It took him a very long time to turn, even longer to lift his head.

  Two days of stubble dotted his chin, giving him a derelict look. His linen stock hung untied around his neck, gray with dirt. But the worst of it was his eyes. They were empty. Dead.

  What had they done to him?

  “Antoine Daubier?” André repeated. He made a rough gesture. “Get up. You’re coming with me.”

  Daubier shook his head. Even the simple movement seemed to cost him an effort. “Please,” he said. “No. Just let me stay here.”

  He wasn’t acting. He meant it. André narrowed his eyes at him. Daubier answered with a small shake of his head.

  André made a snorting noise. “Pitiful,” he said, for the concierge’s benefit. “Come along. You can’t evade your fate.”

  Daubier rose slowly to his feet, using his left hand to lever himself up off the cot. He still wore the breeches, stockings, and shoes he had been wearing when he was taken. They were all dirtied now, but otherwise he seemed to be intact. André’s practiced eye conducted a quick inventory. There was no blood on Daubier’s breeches, no signs of broken toes or shattered knees. He moved as though cramped by cold, but not in the way of one who had been beaten; André knew the signs.

  And yet, somehow, they had broken him. Every line of Daubier’s face spoke despair. It sat ill on his formerly jovial countenance. “It’s not worth it,” he said quietly, and André knew he thought of Gabrielle and Pierre-André and the risks André ran in freeing him.

  Well, there were risks the other way too. Even the most determined man might talk in the end. André had seen what happened after a skilled master of the question had done his work.

  Daubier raised his hand. His right hand. “Let me die here. There’s no point to me anymore.”

  Daubier’s hand was scarcely recognizable as such. Every single joint had been broken. The skin was a mottled mass of yellow, purple, and green. The fingers bent at odd angles, unsplinted, left to grow together again as they would.

  The bastards. The bloody bastards.

  André was filled with a cold rage, more determined than ever to get Daubier out. This was his doing too, at least in part.

  If he had come sooner . . . if they had all been more careful . . .

  What was the use of it? Practicalities came first. The important thing was to get them both out before Delaroche could wreak any more damage on Daubier.

  “The Minister of Police disagrees,” said André coldly. “He believes you still have many things to tell us.”

  “Please . . .” Daubier held up his broken hand, even that small movement causing him pain. Tears came to the old man’s eyes. “Don’t.”

  André forced his face to hardness. “Your caterwauling bores me, Monsieur. Will you come quietly, or shall I have you bound?”

  Daubier gave him a look that spoke betrayal. What betrayal? He was risking his own life and that of his children to get the man out.

  “Will you come?” André repeated.

  Daubier nodded, slowly.

  “Good,” said André. He turned to the concierge. “I doubt he will be able to run in this state.”

  The concierge nodded, eager to be seen to be in agreement. “Oh no, sir. Not like that.”

  André nodded to a pile of fabric next to the cot. “Put his coat on him, will you? We don’t want him freezing on us—not before he talks.”

  The attempt to pull the garment on over Daubier’s wounded hand made the man scream with pain. André could feel his stomach twist with it. It was necessary, he told himself. Daubier would be grateful for it later. Daubier would need the cloak, wherever it was they were going.

  It would have been nice to know where that was.

  When Mlle. Griscogne had returned the previous afternoon, all she had told him was that everything was arranged. She wouldn’t tell him what was arranged or how or where. Just an address and the instruction to be there, with Daubier, just past dawn the following morning. She would bring de Berry, the children, and Jeannette.

  Hostages for his good behavior? It might, he knew, be a trap. If someone wanted a guarantee of his defection, strolling in with an escaped prisoner on his hands was sure proof. But as Mlle. Griscogne had so tactfully pointed out, he had no other choice.

  They were a good half mile from the Temple before Daubier spoke. His voice was so low that André could hardly hear him. “You should have left me.”

  “You should know better than that,” said André with an attempt at joviality that fell painfully flat. The mud sucked at his boots. “We were in this together, we’ll get out of this together.”

  Daubier didn’t answer. The rain had flattened his exuberant hair against his head. He wore no hat. He must not have had it to hand when he was arrested.

  André cursed. But for him, Daubier would be still in his studio, his hand fully functional, badgering his apprentices and charming his models. “I should never have drawn you into it.”

  Daubier shook his head again. “I was already in it. You knew that. I’m not your charge.”

  “You’re my friend,” said André roughly. “That counts for as much.”

  “You should have left me there,” said Daubier querulously. “You should have listened.”

  “If you keep saying that,” said André, “I’ll begin to agree with you.”

  Daubier scowled at the cobbles. “It’s all done, André.” His voice was unsteady with grief and anger. “Everything. There’s no use to me anymore. You should have left me to die.”

  “Would you like to go back?” said André acidly. “It could be arranged.”

  Using his good hand, Daubier clutched his cloak closer around his shoulders and trudged ahead. Watching Daubier’s bowed back, André felt pity and guilt and resentment all churn together in his gut, as noxious a brew as anything they served at the Temple.

  It was unlikely Daubier would hold a brush in that hand again, at least not with his prior skill. But to count one’s life lost for the loss of a skill? It was something André had never understood, even after all those years with Julie.

  Someday, André assured himself, Daubier would thank him. Someday, when they were safely out of France and his hand had healed and—and what? He had settled down by a hearth somewhere, to slumber out the rest of his life to oblivion? It was impossible to imagine Daubier being anything but what he was—a painter. What was a painter who couldn’t paint?

  They walked the rest of the way in silence. Daubier seemed to scarcely know where he went. His feet moved as though they had no relation to the rest of him.

  The address Mlle. Griscogne had given him led to a tavern. It was not a terribly prosperous one. It was a ramshackle place, with eaves missing from the roof and shutters hanging on luck and a prayer. But that wasn’t what caught André’s eye. The inn’s yard was crowded with a series of gaudily painted wagons. They were scarcely in better condition than the inn. The red paint was peeling and the trim all but gone. But the legend on the side was still legible.

  Commedia dell’Aruzzio.

  Mlle. Griscogne stepped out from behind one of the wagons, Pierre-André clinging to her skirts.

  “Good morning,” she said with a lopsided smile. “Welcome to your new career in the theatre.”

  Chapter 22

  It was a comedy, all right. A dark comedy.

  Colin’s mother’s party was being held in a gallery in the Place des Vosges
, just two houses down from the building that would have once held Antoine Daubier’s studio. The clear plate glass of the windows looked very incongruous between the heavy stone arches. Inside, the gallery space had been entirely gutted, the walls painted a glaring white against which the jewel tones of Colin’s mother’s paintings showed to even greater effect.

  Colin led me up to his mother, Serena following quietly behind. Mrs. Selwick-Selwick-Alderly was talking to someone, a champagne glass already in one hand, but she turned as we approached, letting out a little cry of greeting as Colin approached.

  Like Serena, she was thin, but her skin sat comfortably on her bones, making her slenderness a pleasant thing rather than a sickly one.

  I hadn’t realized, looking at old pictures, just how tall she was. In heels, she was nearly as tall as her son. He scarcely had to bend to brush her cheek with his lips.

  “Mum,” he said. “Happy birthday.”

  “My son, Colin,” she said to the man standing next to her. “You’ve met Alan, Colin, haven’t you? No?”

  “You? A grown son?” The man had an American accent, vaguely Texan. “You’re pulling my leg. I don’t believe it.”

  When she beamed down at Alan, Mrs. Selwick-Selwick-Alderly’s eyes crinkled at the corners just like Colin’s. They were a different color, though, brown where Colin’s were hazel. “I scarcely believe it myself.”

  “Not just a grown son, but a grown daughter, too,” said Jeremy, presenting Serena like a trophy. He had one hand on the small of her back, just where her shawl ended. From the expression on her face, you would have thought he was holding a gun in it. “Well, nearly grown.”

  Given that Jeremy was as near in age to Serena as he was to Caroline, I thought that was a bit rich. Colin’s father had married late and Jeremy’s father early, but they had been of the same generation—just as Jeremy was, technically, of the same generation as Colin and Serena. They were on the same line on the family tree, a line below Colin’s mother.

  Serena mustered a sickly smile. “Happy birthday.”

  Mrs. Selwick-Selwick made a face over the rim of her champagne glass. “I wish you would stop speaking of birthdays,” she said plaintively. “You make me feel so frightfully old.”

  “You, Caro?” Another man slid an arm around Mrs. Selwick-Selwick’s waist. “You can never grow old. If you’re old, where would that leave the rest of us?”

  “Positively doddering,” she said definitively. She frowned at her daughter. “Darling, you need a glass. Jemmy, won’t you go? And who is this? We haven’t met, have we?”

  She smiled politely at me, her eyes already drifting over my shoulder. She gave a fluttery little wave to someone who had just entered.

  “This is Eloise, Mum,” said Colin patiently.

  His mother looked blank.

  “Eloise,” he repeated. “My girlfriend.”

  “Hi,” I said quickly, before things could get awkward. “Thank you so much for having me to your party.”

  “Not at all,” Mrs. Selwick-Selwick said vaguely. “Delighted to have you. Do enjoy yourself. Oh, Alan, be a love and snag Lydia for me. I’ve been longing to talk to her.”

  With a vague smile and a tap on the cheek for Colin, she drifted away, earrings tinkling gently.

  I began to see what Serena had meant when she said I had nothing to worry about. This wasn’t going to be your classic parental grilling. Watching her make the rounds, I could well believe that Colin could tell her he was joining an ashram in India, and her sole response would be “Darling! How lovely. Do enjoy.”

  “Champagne?” Colin asked me.

  “Lovely,” I said, and stepped aside to allow him room to maneuver past, towards the table that had been set up as a bar. There was a plate of tiny canapés set out on one side, but no one was eating them. The champagne, on the other hand, was going like gangbusters.

  Given Serena’s reaction to any mention of her mother, I had expected something straight out of Mommie Dearest, with snide comments and the odd sizzle of a cigarette burn. But it wasn’t like that, at all. There were none of the digs about Serena’s appearance that I’d expected, no unkind comments about her clothes or hair. But then, maybe one didn’t have to be critical to be cruel. Maybe it was enough just not to care.

  I watched as Colin’s mother—“Caro,” they all called her, fondly and familiarly—lit up among her friends. Despite her height, she had a way of tilting her head that made it seem as though she were looking up rather than down, an endearingly open way of laughing, and that crinkle-eyed smile that reminded me so viscerally of Colin.

  Unlike the other women, Mrs. Selwick-Selwick’s good looks were the product of fortunate genetics, not plastic surgery or expensive makeup. She made no effort to hide the wrinkles next to her eyes, or the brown spots from years of too much tanning. Her hair must have been assisted, but you would never have been able to tell; the dark blond, so like Colin’s, looked completely natural, expensively cut but otherwise left free. The same was true of her manner. Her tones, unlike Jeremy’s self-consciously estuary English, were the unapologetic cut glass of the English upper class, but she carried it naturally, just as she did her exaggerated earrings and too-short dress.

  There was a childlike charm to Mrs. Selwick-Selwick. I’d almost call it an innocence.

  It was all the more disconcerting given the nature of her friends. Colin hadn’t been exaggerating when he referred to her cronies as Eurotrash. There was much dropping of names and discussion of private jets and ski resorts and this or that exclusive vacation spot. They were a type I recognized from New York—the genuine jet-setters, hard-eyed and hard-edged. Jeremy fit right in, a classic hanger-on on the scene. In contrast, Colin’s mother was Alice in Wonderland, frolicking in perpetual wide-eyed wonderment through a psychedelic landscape.

  The most incongruous part of the whole affair was that Caroline Selwick-Selwick, or whatever combination of hyphens she affected following her second marriage, was as good an artist as Jeremy had claimed. Whatever else might be an act, this much was true. Colin’s mother was talented. Really, truly talented.

  Leaving Colin to fight his way to the bar, I wandered along the side of the room, examining the paintings. Colin had one at Selwick Hall. From a distance, I had originally thought it was a Canaletto, until I noticed that the miniature people in the Italian piazza included a skateboarder and various folks on mopeds. Not all the paintings were street scenes; she had done still lifes as well, turning the traditional into the radical with a daring use of nearly neon color. One thing I did notice, though. Aside from the tiny figures in the Italian scenes, there were no portraits. Humans, as such, weren’t of much interest to Mrs. Selwick-Selwick.

  I tried to reconcile these meticulously constructed compositions with the aging socialite on the other side of the room, scattering “darlings” like diamonds, dashing from group to group and conversation to conversation. It was hard to imagine her capable of any kind of concerted attention, and yet, each of these compositions represented hours of painstaking work, away from the world, locked alone in a studio. They weren’t the sort of things one could just dash off in a moment; if anything, they were the reverse of the rapid charcoal drawings of Julie Beniet, distinguished by precision rather than passion. Not at all what one would have expected.

  I was turning away when someone bumped me from the other side. Champagne sloshed onto my toes.

  “Sorry,” I said automatically, even though I was the bumpee. And then, “Oh my goodness. Melinda?”

  I couldn’t say Pammy hadn’t warned me. There she was in the flesh. A fair amount of flesh, since her dress draped on a diagonal from one shoulder and under the opposite arm, leaving a great deal of collarbone bare.

  Age hadn’t done much for Melinda. She had never been particularly pretty, but that hadn’t mattered much when we were all in the same kilts and collared shirts, our hair crammed into scrunchy buns. Now her once-curly hair had been meticulously straightened and her naturally
broad body dieted into angularity. She had tanned herself a color just short of orange. It didn’t suit her. Not that it really mattered. What Melinda did, she did on connections, not looks—or, for that matter, brains.

  I wondered if she was still spelling her name Melynda.

  “Wow!” I exclaimed. “Small world. How are you?”

  She blinked at me for a moment. Okay, we had only gone to school together for thirteen years. Neither of us had changed that much. I was pretty sure she knew who I was. On the other hand, this was the same woman who had gotten a six on her practice French Lit AP Exam.

  That’s six out of a hundred, in case you were wondering.

  “Eloise. Oh. Hi.”

  The man next to her held out a hand. From their body language, I couldn’t tell whether he and Melinda were together, or simply acquaintances of chance. He looked like he came from the art world side of things, a turtleneck under a sport coat. Judging purely on superficials, he was closer to Jeremy’s age than ours. “I don’t think we’ve met.”

  “Eloise Kelly,” I said. “Melinda and I went to school together.”

  “It was a while ago,” she said, with a rapidity that made me wonder just how old she was pretending to be these days. We were well past the point of doctoring our IDs to get into bars. Melinda had been a fixture at Dorrian’s back in Upper School, twenty-one before she was sixteen.

  “Pammy mentioned that she’d run into you,” I said, determined to be nice. “What a great coincidence.”

  “Oh yes. I saw Pammy in London.” She turned to the man next to her. “Pammy Harrington.”

  He nodded knowingly. Everyone knows Pammy. It’s one of those laws of nature.

  Melinda lifted a languid hand. “Nice to see you. Give my best to your parents.”

  “Likewise,” I lied. Melinda’s mother had been colloquially known as the Dragon Queen. Mrs. Horner had controlled the lists for all the junior cotillions. You’ve never seen pure, raw power until you’ve watched a society matron decreeing who shall be invited and who shall be denied.

  “Eloise?” It was Colin, champagne glass in hand.