The Orchid Affair

by Lauren Willig

  “Hi,” Melinda said to Colin, tilting her head at a Cosmo-approved angle.

  I will admit to a certain petty satisfaction as I slid my arm through Colin’s and said quietly, “Colin, this is Melinda. Melinda, I don’t believe you know my boyfriend, Colin Selwick.”

  “Selwick?” said Melinda.

  “Caro’s son,” Colin added helpfully. “And you are?”

  “Melinda went to Chapin with me,” I said cheerfully. “She’s assistant to—Mike Rock?”

  “Micah Stone.” Melinda drawled out the name as though she were used to the reaction it inspired, but her attention was all on Colin, her eyes narrowed as though she were trying to work something out and finding it rough going. I’d seen her look the same way during those Lower School math marathons called Mad Minutes. “You’re Jeremy’s stepson?”

  Colin stiffened, ever so slightly. “The one and only,” he said charmingly. “Are you friends with Jeremy, then?”

  “I wouldn’t say we were friends.” Melinda was very careful about things like that. You wouldn’t want to be caught being friends with the wrong people. “You mean, he hasn’t told you?”

  “Told me—”

  Colin was cut off by the clink of a metal implement being wielded against glass. The stepfather in question was belaboring the side of a champagne flute with a cheese knife, calling everyone to attention.

  “I’ve invited you here . . . ,” I whispered in Colin’s ear in a very bad fake British accent.

  Colin grinned down at me. “To reveal the identity of the murderer?”

  Jeremy upped the level of his clinking. “Everyone!”

  That meant us.

  Having successfully silenced the peanut gallery, Jeremy relinquished the cheese knife to a white-coated waiter but held on to the champagne glass. “I would like to extend my thanks to you all for joining us tonight to celebrate the birthday of my lovely wife, Caroline—my lovely and talented wife,” he corrected himself.

  Mrs. Selwick-Selwick crinkled her eyes at the assemblage and gave a shimmy of self-deprecation.

  Jeremy turned back to his audience. “As you can see, we have a great deal to celebrate. There’s Caro’s new exhibition, which has been praised by—”

  I have to admit, I tuned out a bit there. Jeremy went on for some time, listing various critics, whose names meant nothing to me—much as, I assume, the top historians in my field would have meant nothing to him. The overall message was clear, though. They all liked Mrs. Selwick-Selwick’s paintings.

  I clapped politely with the others and tried not to slosh my champagne, wondering if this meant that the party was almost over. Could we take our leave, or would we be expected to do family time after? I knew there was a birthday dinner planned for the following night—just Colin’s mother, us, Jeremy, Serena, and ten of their closest friends—but I wasn’t sure if that meant we were off the hook for tonight.

  “—Micah Stone,” announced Jeremy.

  Jeremy said Micah Stone much the way Pammy had, as if it were just one step away from God.

  Huh? I had missed something. When had we gone from Colin’s mother to the new Keanu Reeves? I was very confused.

  I poked Colin in the sleeve, and mouthed, “What?”

  Colin raised his eyebrows and held out his hands in the universal gesture of “Search me.”

  “We have the great privilege of being among the first to know of Micah’s new project.” Jeremy held out a hand to my old classmate, who was sucking in her cheeks in an attempt to create cheekbones. “Would you like to tell them, Melinda?”

  Not really. “It’s a musical version of Much Ado About Nothing,” she drawled. “It’s Shakespeare. With music.”

  That was some enthusiasm. I had a feeling she might have mustered mildly more emotion for Die Hard Five. But Shakespeare? Nah.

  That was okay. Jeremy was emoting enough for two. “There’s more,” he said, shifting his grip on his champagne glass.

  More? What more could there possibly be than Don John doing a kick-line? Somewhere, Shakespeare was rolling. Hopefully with laughter.

  I rolled my eyes at Colin, but Colin’s attention was on his stepfather, who had abandoned all pretense of fêting his wife’s birthday. He had stepped a little ahead of her, dominating the room, his jacket very dark against the white walls and white-coated waiters.

  “After prolonged consultations and negotiations, Micah and his team have arrived at what I believe—and I do hope you’ll agree with me—is the perfect location for the production. I’d like you to join me in raising your glasses”—Jeremy was practically sizzling with excitement, as effervescent as the bubbles in his glass—“to the new location of Micah Stone’s latest and greatest film.”

  I looked around for Serena. She was standing all the way at the back, her knuckles very white against the raspberry and silver silk of her wrap. She didn’t look bewildered. She looked sick.

  Something was wrong. Something was very wrong.

  I looked from Jeremy, smug; to Colin’s mother, oblivious; to Colin, confused; to Melinda, bored.

  Jeremy’s lips spread in a grin that made me think of the Cheshire Cat, the one that lingers and lingers long after the cat himself has gone.

  “To Micah Stone’s new movie!” Jeremy hoisted his champagne glass high. “And to Selwick Hall!”

  Chapter 23

  “Welcome,” said Mlle. Griscogne. “Welcome to the Commedia dell’Aruzzio.”

  André looked around the courtyard. There were five wagons in all, each painted a gaudy crimson with yellow trim, every one emblazoned with Commedia dell’Aruzzio.

  Commedia. An acting troupe?

  Mlle. Griscogne matched the wagons. She had shed her customary gray in favor of a white linen blouse and yellow skirt, full and belted at the waist, with a thick red shawl crisscrossed peasant-style over her shoulders. Her hair had been left down, pulled back at the sides and tied with a red ribbon.

  Pierre-André abandoned her waist to fling himself at his father’s instead. “We waited and waited and waited for you,” Pierre-André said accusingly, as only a four-year-old could.

  André absently patted his son’s head. “The Commedia del what?”

  “Aruzzio,” provided Mlle. Griscogne helpfully. “Although I doubt any of them have been any nearer to Aruzzio than Bourgogne.”

  André looked about for the rest of his family. “Where are Gabrielle? And, er, Cousin Philippe?”

  “In the tavern with Jeannette. They’re having breakfast with the rest of the troupe. Both have already assumed their roles.”

  “What roles?” asked André warily.

  “We’re to be actors!” exclaimed Pierre-André. “And live in a house on wheels!”

  His son evidently thought this was all a grand idea.

  “Actors,” repeated André.

  “I’m sure you’ve heard of it,” said Mlle. Griscogne. “People who pretend to be something other than what they are. Only in this instance, it involves a stage and a costume. I shouldn’t think you should have too much trouble with that.”

  André took in the gaudy wagons. “Hardly inconspicuous.”

  “Call it escaping in plain sight.” She looked anxiously about. “Where is Monsieur Daubier? Don’t tell me you didn’t bring him?”

  “Monsieur Daubier—” André scanned the courtyard. He finally spotted the old artist, huddled on the steps of one of the wagons, hunched over as though his limbs had given out on him. “Monsieur Daubier is over there.”

  “What did they do to him?”

  André took his son by the shoulders and turned him towards the tavern. “Go see if Jeannette has some bread and honey for you.”

  Pierre-André looked at him suspiciously. “Are you going away again?”

  André shook his head. “Only with you. I’ll be there in a moment. Tell Jeannette to order a coffee for me?”

  Pierre-André nodded importantly and scampered off.

  “Well?”

  André took a
deep breath. “They broke his hand.”

  “His hand.”

  “His right hand.”

  “His—oh.” Her face blanched as the full implications of it dawned on her.

  “Finger by finger,” said André grimly. “They cracked the knuckles and shattered the bone.”

  “Will he ever paint again?”

  André shook his head. “Unlikely.”

  “Was there no way to stop them?”

  It was what he had been asking himself. “If I had come a day earlier. Maybe.”

  She had asked for that day, that day’s grace period, to make her arrangements, whatever those arrangements might be. André had used that day for purposes of his own, to tie up his own loose ends and cobble together a series of backup plans in the event his governess proved untrustworthy.

  He had never thought that Delaroche would act so quickly. Usually, he preferred to begin with more mental methods, working slowly from mind to body, savoring the experience of playing with his prisoner. He had acted too fast this time. A sign of his own instability—and André’s failure.

  “If you had freed him right away,” Mlle. Griscogne said unsteadily, “we might have hidden you while the hue and cry arose. We could have secreted you away somewhere.”

  “All of us?” said André. “A whole household? De Berry and Daubier and the children and Jeannette? Delaroche would have been on us like ants on honey.” Red strands of wool snagged against the brown leather of his gloves as he grasped her by the shoulders, forcing her to face him. “We didn’t know.”

  Mlle. Griscogne shrugged away, not meeting his eye. “I suppose you’ll want to hear the plan,” she said in a rough voice.

  Fair enough. She didn’t like to admit weakness any more than he.

  “I have papers for everyone.” She didn’t say where she had acquired them. André didn’t ask. “We are a theatrical family fallen on hard times. Monsieur Daubier is my father. Jeannette is your stepmother.”

  “Nicely cast,” commented André. “She’ll enjoy that.”

  Mlle. Griscogne’s lip quirked a bit at that. “The—er, Philippe, is your younger brother. Gabrielle and Pierre-André are our children.”

  “Which makes us?”

  “Husband and wife.” She didn’t meet his eyes. “For the duration of the journey.”

  “Hmm,” said André.

  “There wasn’t any other way,” she said defensively. She fussed with the edges of her shawl. “It would have looked very odd for us to be traveling in such a large group without . . .”

  “Familial ties?” he provided.

  “Precisely,” she said gratefully. “It was simply a matter of expedience.”

  That certainly put him in his place. “So we are to be acting offstage as well as on.”

  Including the bedchamber. He didn’t know much about theatrical troupes, but he imagined they would be living in very close quarters. André looked over his shoulder at the wagons. All of them were far smaller than the smallest of the salons in the Hôtel de Bac.

  Very close quarters, indeed.

  “If you are to be my wife—for the duration of the journey—,” he amended, before she could do it herself, “I should probably call you Laura, shouldn’t I? Unless we are to be assuming other names.”

  She seized on his businesslike approach with relief. “The—my friend thought it best that we keep our own Christian names. They’re common enough, and we’re less likely to stumble on them. Our surname is Malcontre.”

  “Ill-met?” She had reason to consider it an ill day that she had fallen in with them. From governess to fugitive in one easy misstep. “They might agree with that, once they’ve seen our acting. There might be a reason we’ve fallen on hard times.”

  “Cécile—their Columbine—is the only one who knows we aren’t what we say. But that’s all she knows. Just that we needed safe passage to the coast.”

  “Columbine. The maidservant?”

  “You do know the Commedia dell’Arte, then.”

  “I was young once too.” Like all young men, he had frequented the theatres, just as he had the debating societies and taverns. He had always preferred the formal stage to the exaggerated routines of the Commedia dell’Arte, but he was familiar with the form. A series of stock characters acted out various pre-plotted scenarios, mostly variations on the same themes. There were invariably young lovers, overbearing fathers, and saucy maidservants.

  “With no scripts to memorize, it shouldn’t be too difficult to pretend for the month it will take us to get to Dieppe,” said Mlle. Griscogne earnestly. No, he reminded himself. Laura. “I have Gherland’s book of scenarios in the wagon. As for the other troupe members, I’ve told them that Jeannette was our wardrobe mistress. And Monsieur Daubier—Monsieur Daubier was our set painter.”

  “If he’s to be your father,” said André, “you shouldn’t go on calling him Monsieur Daubier.”

  “A fair point,” admitted Laura. “We should begin as we mean to go on. The children have already been instructed to call him grandpère. They have,” she added, “taken to this rather well.”

  Guilt caught at André’s tongue, silencing him. It seemed to him the basest of ironies that actions taken in the grand name of his children’s future should have come to this. He had meant to make the world safer for them. Instead, he had cast them into exile, with no set future before them. Even if they escaped, what then? He wasn’t one of the Comte d’Artois’s own. He had no faith in the gratitude—or the means—of the Duc de Berry. In the very best case, they would arrive in England as refugees, dependent on their wits for their bread, scrounging out a living as best they could.

  It was a far cry from the Hôtel de Bac.

  On the other hand, it was better than being guillotined. They owed a great deal to Mlle. Griscogne. Er, Laura. He looked assessingly at the former governess, her tired face at odds with her gaudy clothes. Droplets of rain sparkled on the red wool of her shawl, damping the white linen bodice beneath. She had gone to a great deal of trouble for them. Not just trouble, danger. There was every chance that she might have walked away from this all unscathed. Delaroche wouldn’t waste that much time on a governess, especially one who had been in residence for fewer than three months.

  By escaping with them, she placed her own neck in the noose. It was either an act of astounding generosity—for Daubier, he reminded himself; all for Daubier—or his former governess had unfathomable motives of her own.

  Motives and connections.

  “It was clever of you to think of this,” he said abruptly.

  Not only clever, but expeditious. To come up with a plan, acquire false papers, and engineer a new set of identities for six people within the course of twenty-four hours was no mean feat.

  She hitched her shawl higher around her shoulders. “Don’t say that until we’re past the gates.”

  “And after we’re free of the city?” André asked.

  “The troupe’s route takes them through Dieppe. If all goes well, a ship will be waiting for us there in one month’s time.”

  “That long?” A great deal could go wrong in a month.

  “It would cause talk if we barreled through without actually performing. The other actors would start to wonder. If we have to,” she added, “we can always break away from the troupe and travel on our own.”

  “Hopefully it won’t come to that.” Better to transport Daubier in the relative comfort of a wagon rather than tramp across the fields by foot. Pierre-André and Gabrielle might find walking the fields and sleeping rough an adventure for a day or two, but it wouldn’t take long for them to tire of it. It might be cold inside the wagons, but it would be colder outside of them. “How soon do we leave?”

  “If all goes well, we should depart within the hour. Would you like to go inside and meet the troupe?”

  “I probably ought . . . Laura.”

  She looked at him sharply.

  “Begin as we mean to go on,” he reminded her.

/>   The ghost of a smile drifted across her face. “And we are past liberties. André.”

  For a moment, they faced each other, sizing each other up, coming to terms with their arrangement. She looked very different with her hair down, the shawl brightening her face. But the rest—the intelligence, the humor—that was all entirely hers, unchanged. Lucky for them.

  “We were very fortunate to have you as our governess,” André said slowly.

  Mlle. Griscogne—Laura—shrugged, uncomfortable with praise. “I did tell you that my program was comprehensive.” Without quite looking at him, she moved rapidly away. “I’ll go fetch Monsieur . . . I mean, Papa.”

  He saw her squat down by Monsieur Daubier in the overhang of the wagon, speaking to the old artist in a low, earnest tone. One hand came out from under the enveloping wool of the shawl to cover Monsieur Daubier’s. The left hand. There was something inexplicably tender about the gesture. She looked, he thought, like the daughter she claimed to be, Cordelia kneeling by Lear.

  Hopefully, this drama would end more happily than that one had.

  As André watched, Daubier allowed her to help him up, rising heavily to his feet. Antoine Daubier was a tall, heavyset man, but hunched over as he was, they looked nearly of a size. Laura braced an arm around the old man’s back, supporting him. He leaned heavily on her, but she never faltered.

  André moved quickly to the artist’s other side, but the look Daubier gave him stopped him short. “I told her you should have left me.”

  “You know that’s rot,” said André.

  Laura sent him a warning look.

  “We need you,” she said to Daubier. André was amazed by the calm of her voice. “Our story makes very little sense without you with us. I’m no actress.” André could have disputed that, but kept silent. “Nor is Monsieur Ja—André. But you? You can design sets that will make them weep with gratitude.”

  “How can I, when I can no longer hold a brush?” Daubier’s voice was hoarse, but there was a flicker of interest in his eye that hadn’t been there before.

  “You still have your left hand. If Milton could write blind, can’t you paint left-handed? It might not be the same, but think what a broad canvas you have to practice upon. A set is a very different thing from an easel. Unless, of course,” she said meditatively, “you think it’s too much of a challenge for you. You’ve been painting portraits for so very long now. . . .”