The Orchid Affair

by Lauren Willig

  Thus making it impossible for the guards on the pier to intervene. Unless, of course, they felt like a swim. André somehow doubted that they did. Delaroche seldom paid well.

  “Then what?” André asked.

  “As soon as the Cauchemar is floating free, we’re going to make a bit of a fire on the deck to draw off the guards.”

  André saw one rather large problem with that. “What if the fire spreads?”

  Lord Richard produced a wide and shallow bowl, in which someone appeared to have dumped a pile of greasy rags. “It won’t, unless some idiot is fool enough to overturn the bowl. If we do this correctly, it should produce a great deal of thick, black smoke but very little fire. It ought, however, take them some time to realize that. Nothing spooks a sailor like fire on board ship. Stiles?”

  “Arrrrr?” said the pirate interrogatively.

  Lord Richard rolled his eyes slightly, but forbore to comment. “I’ll expect you and Pete to be standing by. When the guards show any sign of returning to their posts, tackle them. Make sure they don’t make it below deck.”

  “Aye, aye, Cap’n!” The parrot wobbled as the pirate saluted.

  Lord Richard looked pained. “Oh, and, Stiles?”

  “Cap’n?”

  “You might want to leave the parrot in the dinghy. Just a thought.” Turning to André, he said, “We three will seek out Delaroche and free the captives.”

  “Your experience with boats is greater than mine,” said André. It would be impossible for it not to be; to his knowledge, he had never been on one. All his travel had been accomplished on land. “Where will he have them? And how do we get to them without being seen?”

  Lord Richard nodded. “Despite its size, the Cauchemar seems to be a fairly simple model. There are two possible places that Delaroche might be holding your son. He could be in the main cabin, to the rear, here.” Lord Richard sketched a diagram on the planks of the dinghy with a finger dipped in water. “Or here, in the hold.” He sketched a second rectangle below the first. “If I know my Delaroche, he’ll have them in the hold. It’s the closest he can get to a dungeon.”

  It sounded like a logical enough conclusion, but for one thing. “Delaroche doesn’t follow any known rules of logic these days,” André warned. “Your escape sent him around the bend. That, and being separated from his interrogation chamber. They made him pack up his Iron Maiden. It has rendered him . . . unpredictable.”

  “You can certainly say that,” said Lord Richard slowly, squinting at the ship. They were drawing steadily closer, the muffled oars making little noise in the water. He pointed towards the deck. “Look at that.”

  At first, all André saw were the guards—at least a dozen of them. There were four directly in his line of vision, playing a game that seemed to involve round discs and a mop. As one hit the disc in a broad sweep, the others followed, leaving André a clear view of the mast. The sails were furled, but that wasn’t what created the strange bulk at the bottom.

  “What in the devil? . . .”

  Two people had been tied to the mast, by the simple expedient of looping a rope around them again and again and again. One woman and one small boy.

  “The devil, indeed,” Lord Richard agreed. “But a very obliging one. There’s no need to search for what’s been placed in plain sight.”

  Daubier appropriated Stiles’s spyglass, shaking it open with his good hand. “Where is that Delaroche?”

  “Somewhere nearby, unless I miss my guess,” responded Lord Richard. “Lurking. He’ll be waiting for you to make your appearance.”

  “There’s an hour to midnight yet,” said André shortly, appropriating the glass from Daubier.

  Even at this range, there was no mistaking the fury in Jeannette’s face. Someone had stuffed a gag in her mouth. Jeannette’s eyes bulged out angrily over the wide strip of striped cloth. It was the largest gag André had ever seen, and during his time at the Prefecture, he had seen quite a few. Someone was taking no chances. Having been on the wrong side of a few of Jeannette’s tongue-lashings, André could well imagine why.

  Pierre-André, on the other hand, was fettered but unmuzzled. He appeared to be carrying on a spirited conversation with a sailor who had hunkered down next to him. From the way the man was pointing at various bits of rope, he was either threatening Pierre-André with hanging from the yardarm or explaining the intricacies of rigging. From the man’s relaxed posture, it looked like the latter.

  No torture, then. At least, not yet.

  André didn’t want to think about what Delaroche had planned for midnight.

  “He’s made it harder for us,” André said abruptly. “By placing them in plain sight, he makes it impossible for us to creep up unseen.”

  “There are twelve of them and five of us,” said Lord Richard. “I’d say good odds, wouldn’t you?”

  There were times when that aristocratic, sporting attitude could be a damned nuisance. André would have preferred a bit of bourgeois common sense.

  “Thirteen, if we count Delaroche,” André reminded him. “And we don’t know how many more men Delaroche has belowdecks.”

  “Sure, an’ it be an ill omen, Cap’n,” contributed Stiles, tugging at his earring. “For thirteen ha’ e’er been a number that brings men to their doom.”

  “Your accent is slipping,” said Lord Richard calmly. “Slight change of plan. Pete, set the fire right in front of the opening to the hold. It will draw the men away from the mast and delay anyone trying to come up from below. Stiles, I need you to open the hold. As the men come running, you might want to, er, help them along. We’ll soon thin their numbers.”

  “What about me?” asked Daubier.

  Lord Richard refrained from looking at Daubier’s malformed hand. “I need you to free the boy and his nurse. They know you, so they won’t kick up a fuss. Get them into the dinghy. Jaouen and I will cover your retreat.”

  For a moment, Daubier looked like he might argue, then he caught André’s eye and subsided. He nodded at Lord Richard’s sword. “Give Monsieur Delaroche a good scratch for me, will you? Make it a painful one.”

  “My pleasure,” said Lord Richard. “I still owe him for a memorable evening in his extra-special interrogation chamber.” He checked his pocket watch, then looked to the pier. “Ah, there go the ropes. Good lads!”

  As the Cauchemar began to gently drift, Pete fastened the dinghy to the side of the ship. Lord Richard picked his men well. He scaled the wall silently, the large bowl of greasy rags clamped beneath one arm. Stiles followed, parrot bobbing.

  A rope ladder flopped down in Stiles’s wake. A nice touch. It would be easier for Jeannette and Pierre-André than jumping. For that matter, it made it easier for the rest of them to climb up. André’s had been a desk job. Gymnastic feats weren’t in his line.

  “Wait for it,” Lord Richard murmured. “One, two . . .”

  “Fire!” shouted someone. There was the sound of pounding feet on deck.

  Lord Richard swung onto the rope ladder. He was up and over the side in an instant. André followed suit, somewhat more clumsily but no less speedily, hoisting himself over the edge to find the deck engulfed in black smoke. From the thuds and yelps, Stiles was doing his job when it came to helping the crew into the hold. Holding a fold of his too-large doublet over his mouth, André elbowed his way through to the mast.

  “Hang on!” he ordered Jeannette.

  She narrowed her eyes in a way that would have been a sarcastic comment if she were able to make one.

  The ropes holding them had been tied with a particularly complex nautical knot. It would probably be easy enough to disassemble if one had the training on a ship. André didn’t. Drawing his knife from his belt, André began slashing at the rope. If he could get one strand free, he could release the whole.

  Pierre-André began to wiggle, making the task even harder. Someone grabbed André’s shoulder, hard. Without thinking, acting on pure reflex, André rammed his elbow sideways, harde
r. He heard a choking noise as his assailant doubled over, coughing.

  He could hear the whisk of steel as Lord Richard drew his sword from its sheath, driving the remainder of the crew back with the point of the sword. There was a splash as Pete helped a sailor off the edge of the boat, then the vague sound of groaning from the hold.

  Two strands snapped, then a third.

  “Here!” Daubier came up on André’s other side, dodging just in time to avoid being kicked. “Let me see that knot.”

  “I’ve got it,” said André, and the last bit of hemp came loose.

  With his good hand, Daubier grasped the rope, unlooping it as quickly as it would go.

  “Mmmph!” said Jeannette.

  André plucked at the knot at the back of her gag. He was going to regret this, he knew. As Daubier freed Pierre-André and Jeannette, André yanked the cloth free. Jeannette drew in a deep breath, choking on the smoky air.

  “Took you long enough,” she gasped. “My tongue was going numb.”

  “Papa!” With less of him to free, Pierre-André shrugged out of the remains of the rope and flung his arms around André’s waist.

  André gave his son a quick hug. “There’s a rope ladder just there, leading to a boat. Do you think you can climb down it?”

  Pierre-André nodded, coughing. His eyes were red and watering from the smoke.

  There was one last loud splash and Lord Richard appeared beside them. “That’s the last of them. No sign of Delaroche.”

  “None?” André’s hand tightened on Pierre-André’s shoulder.

  Someone, most likely Pete, tossed a blanket over the fire, abruptly curtailing the smoke.

  “Not a whiff of him. And those were sailors, not soldiers,” said Lord Richard grimly. “Something smells wrong.”

  “It was too easy,” André agreed.

  Delaroche wouldn’t have left his hostages virtually unguarded. Unless, that was, he had another goal.

  André turned rapidly towards Jeannette. “Where did he go? The man who brought you here?”

  “You mean after he tied us to that thing?” Jeannette was not in a good humor. “And a fine lot of good you were, leaving us here for hours on end, and the little one like to take a chill.”

  “Delaroche?” André prompted her.

  “Him.” Jeannette’s lips pursed as though she tasted something nasty. “He strapped us up here and then went off to visit his beloved. Courting, I ask you! On a night like this!”

  Lord Richard’s “His what?” clashed with André’s “Beloved?”

  “That’s what he said,” said Jeannette stridently. “That’s where he went. To visit his bien aimée.”

  Chapter 33

  All was quiet on the Bien-Aimée.

  Too quiet. There was nothing but the gentle slap of waves against the keel of the boat as the Bien-Aimée rocked in her berth, the soft susurration of pages as Gabrielle thumbed through her book, the creak of fabric on wood as de Berry settled more comfortably into his chair. If she tried very hard, Laura could make out the sound of conversation on deck, but it was only a muted burr. The cabin of the Bien-Aimée might as well have been wrapped up in cotton wool, well buffered against the world.

  There were only the three of them left on Lord Richard’s boat—Laura, Gabrielle, de Berry—and four of the crew, all posted on deck, keeping watch and doing whatever it was that crews were meant to do. Swabbing? Laura had no idea and even less interest.

  Gabrielle turned another page of her book, paper whispering against paper. The sound made Laura twitchy, like the trail of phantom fingers down her arms. Her costume, gritty with dirt and dried sweat after multiple performances, itched and chafed at her. She wanted to shout, to stomp, to fling something just to hear it break.

  If she made enough noise, she might be able to drown out the sound of André’s voice, saying over and over, “Miss Grey?” and “Mission?”

  Laura paced towards the bookcase, pretending an interest in titles in which she had no interest at all. Even pacing provided little solace. Lord Richard’s cabin on the Bien-Aimée was sumptuously decorated with heavy, dark furniture and rich fabrics. The Axminster carpet on the floor—entirely impractical for a seagoing vessel—blunted the slap of Laura’s footfalls, muting her movements into nothing more than a prolonged murmur, like someone whispering hush.

  Laura didn’t want to hush. She wanted to stamp her feet and hear the echo of it. She wanted to argue with someone, anyone. It was infuriating to be left alone with nothing but the tribunal of one’s own thoughts and a host of inchoate fears, some practical, some absurd.

  Her brain was crawling with might-have-beens, as irritating as lice in one’s scalp—crawling, biting, itching, impossible to claw out. If only she had kept closer watch on Pierre-André; if only she had jumped off the stage and tackled Delaroche when first she spotted him; if only she had told André who and what she was rather than waiting to let him find it out at the worst possible time from the worst possible person.

  It wasn’t my secret to tell, she defended herself to an invisible André. It wasn’t anything to do with you.

  That was another thing. It wasn’t as though André had confided in her out of choice. It was circumstance on his side, not moral high ground. If Daubier hadn’t been discovered, they would have gone on just as they were, she playing the governess, André playing his double game, neither the wiser.

  Of course, then, they hadn’t been sharing a bed.

  Laura stared at her own reflection in the glass of the bookshelves and wondered, resentfully, why that was meant to change anything. Whores gave their bodies to multiple men multiple times a day—or so she had been told. Did that mean they were meant to give their trust where they gave their bodies? Did giving one’s body necessarily mean giving of oneself?

  Everything for love, that had been her mother’s motto. Nothing held back, nothing denied. All body, all soul, all mind, all heart.

  That wasn’t love; it was willful self-destruction.

  That, her mother would have claimed, was love. To fling oneself on the pyre of passion, rising phoenix-like from the ashes—scoured, purified, reborn.

  But what if one doesn’t rise again? Laura had argued, sixteen years old and stubborn. What if one simply burns?

  Her mother had no answer for her. Neither did her shadow image in the bookshelf.

  Laura turned away from the glass. It was terrifying, this notion of tearing chunks off one’s soul and handing them over to another for safekeeping. It had been easier not to tell André the truth, to keep her own counsel the way one might keep a packed portmanteau, always ready to pick up and move on at a moment’s notice, settling nowhere, trusting no one.

  If one never got attached, one never got hurt.

  Next to her, Gabrielle sat curled up in a wide-armed chair, reading. As Laura paced past, Gabrielle glanced up from her book.

  “What time is it?”

  Laura consulted the watch pinned to her breast. “Five past eleven.”

  Gabrielle nodded and went back to her book—Laura peeked sideways at the lettering on the spine—Voltaire’s Candide. All for the best in the best of all possible worlds.

  It was twenty minutes now since André had left with Lord Richard and Daubier. Only twenty minutes. It felt like months.

  Laura’s skirt dragged against her legs as she paced. She kicked it out of the way. She was still dressed as Ruffiana, although bits of her costume had gone missing along the way. Her cap was somewhere backstage, her petticoats discarded. Without them, her skirts hung too long, despite her attempts to kirtle them up. The stomacher pressed uncomfortably against her ribs, heavy with embroidery, thick enough to repel a bullet.

  Perhaps she ought to have offered the stomacher to André, presented it to him as armor. The doublet he wore as Il Capitano was a flimsy thing, the shoddiest of secondhand silks.

  Laura wished Lord Richard had let her go with them. She might not have extensive combat training, but she could point a
pistol and pull the trigger, or use the proper end of a pointy bit of steel if it came down to it. Yes, yes, she knew there were refinements to such things, but she doubted Delaroche’s men were going to be judging her on the niceties of her fencing, and when it came down to it, an extra pair of arms was an extra pair of arms.

  Five against however many Delaroche might have mustered wasn’t exactly good odds, especially when it was such a five. For all his determination, André’s chosen weapon was the pen rather than the sword. He was a petit bourgeois, not a gentleman born. Fencing and marksmanship were a gentleman’s occupations, not the province of a provincial lawyer. Then there was Daubier, who couldn’t even wield his brush anymore, much less a sword. They were five, against goodness only knew how many, with only one real swordsman in the lot of them.

  “You’ll wear a hole in the carpet,” de Berry said lazily, nearly tripping her as he kicked out his heels in front of her. “Do sit down, Miss Grey.” And then, with what Laura recognized as royal condescension, “Care for a hand of cards?”

  “No,” said Laura shortly. “Thank you. Your Highness.”

  Gabrielle looked up from her book. “What time is it?”

  “Must you keep asking?” Laura snapped, and instantly regretted it. “I’m sorry. I’m just a bit . . . on edge. They’ll get Pierre-André back, you know. Lord Richard is an expert at this sort of thing.”

  Lord Richard had been an expert at this sort of thing. He had been retired for more than a year now, running a training camp in Sussex. To teach and to do were two different things. No one knew that better than Laura. What if his skills had grown rusty with disuse? What if he had miscalculated?

  “They’ll be back before we know it,” said Laura, too loudly.

  Gabrielle closed her book over one finger, the instinctive gesture of the perpetual reader. Her brows came down over her nose, making her look very like her father. Her eyes were that same peculiar shade of bright blue.