The Orchid Affair (6 page)

An abbey or an Abbaye?

Taking Miss Wooliston’s statement at face value, Mme. Bonaparte laughed good-naturedly. “I shouldn’t imagine you’ll find anything out of the ordinary. Aren’t those novels all the same?”

Miss Gwen let out a loud and offended harrumph that set her plumes a-wagging. “Only to the uninformed. How many have you read recently, missy?”

Mme. Bonaparte held out her hands in a gesture of defeat. “I was once very fond of
La Nouvelle Héloïse
.”

“Ha!” exclaimed Miss Gwen. “That drivel! That Rousseau wouldn’t know a proper plot if it bit him.”

Mme. Bonaparte bowed her head in contrition. “I shall eagerly await the publication of your romance, Mademoiselle Meadows.”

“In the meantime,” said Miss Wooliston, neatly bringing the conversation back around. “I must have my
Children of the Abbey
. I find I am become quite urgent in my curiosity.”

She said it in such a droll way that Mme. Bonaparte laughed, but Laura sensed a deeper purpose. “What do you expect to find?”

Miss Wooliston waved a dismissive hand. “Oh, the usual horrors, as you said. Ghosts, ghouls, strange reversals of fortune, lost princes… .”

Was it Laura’s imagination, or had there been an additional emphasis on that last phrase?

“Strange things can happen in abbeys on dark and stormy nights—much like last night.” The Pink Carnation added prosaically, “That must have been what put me in the mood for it.”

Last night. Last night, after their interview, she had heard M. Jaouen direct his coachman to the Abbaye Prison. Something must have happened at the Abbey last night, something the Pink Carnation most urgently wanted to know.

“You couldn’t be satisfied by
Otranto
?” suggested Mme. Bonaparte with a smile.

“I find I grow weary of my old books.” Miss Wooliston made a face. “I crave more mysterious mysteries and more villainous villains.”

Mme. Bonaparte looked slyly at her friend from beneath her bonnet brim. “What about more heroic heroes?”

The Pink Carnation raised both eyebrows. “Do you know any?” she asked dryly, and Mme. Bonaparte laughed.

“Will that be all?” the shopkeeper asked. It took Laura a moment to realize that he was speaking to her.

Laura hastily reached for her reticule, grateful that the Selwicks had made her take a course on currency at their spy school. She had sorted and resorted
sous
and
louis
and
livres
until she could fumble them out in their correct denominations in her sleep.

“Yes, we’ll have the myths, the Gallic Wars, the botanical treatise and—did you find something, Gabrielle?” she asked, looking down at Gabrielle, who was standing next to her, with a book folded protectively to her chest.

Silently, Gabrielle extended the volume. It was discreetly bound in dark leather, but the title belied the demure exterior. Like the Pink Carnation, Laura’s new charge appeared to have a taste for horrid novels.

Laura took the volume from her, a French translation of Mrs. Radcliffe’s
The Romance of the Forest
. “Does your father let you read this?”

Gabrielle hunched her shoulders defensively. “Grandfather did.”

Laura turned the volume over in her hands, giving Gabrielle time to squirm. “I see no problem with your wallowing in ghosts and ghouls so long as you apply yourself to your lessons first.” Laura plunked Gabrielle’s book down on top of Caesar. “We’ll have that as well.”

“You can return it, if it doesn’t suit,” said the shopkeeper. “Just make sure you include the reckoning.”

“Shopkeep!” Miss Gwen pushed past Laura, waving her furled parasol in the air. “Sirrah!”

Pierre-André stared, fascinated, up at Miss Gwen’s headdress. “I like your feathers.”

Miss Gwen favored the small boy with an approving look, an expression that involved the most marginal relaxation in her habitual scowl. “It is reassuring to find that someone in this benighted city has a sense of fashion.” She wagged a finger at the boy. “Never let them tell you otherwise.”

The Pink Carnation managed to look their way without ever looking at Laura, as though Laura were no more an object to be remarked than the table used as a counter or the smoke leaching from the brazier. A servant. Invisible.

It seemed like a good time to take her leave.

“Come along, come along,” murmured Laura, wedging the four fat books under one arm and shooing Pierre-André ahead of her. “Gabrielle! You don’t want to keep these nice ladies from their shopping.”

With a protective eye on her book, which was currently bundled with the others under Laura’s arm, Gabrielle fell into step.

Laura pushed with her shoulder against the door, holding it for the children to precede her.

As the door slammed behind them, she heard the Pink Carnation earnestly asking the stepdaughter of Bonaparte, “What
did
you think of Madame de Staël’s latest novel?”

“Can I have purple feathers?” Pierre-André’s shrill voice drilled into Laura’s ears.

“Maybe,” said Laura, shifting to readjust the clumsy pile of books under her arm. “What would you use them for?”

“Flying,” he said, as though it were perfectly obvious.

“May I have my book?” interrupted Gabrielle.

“When we get back to the house,” Laura said. “I don’t want to undo the package while we’re walking.” She wondered if there would be another note hidden among the pages of the botanical treatise. She doubted it. The Pink Carnation’s message had been clear enough.

Gabrielle crunched loudly down on a thin patch of ice. “I don’t see why we couldn’t take the carriage,” she muttered.

“Because walking is good for you,” said Laura bracingly. And because she didn’t want the coachman to have a record of where they had gone. While there was no reason for Jaouen to suspect anything amiss about the bookshop, there was also no reason to lead him straight to it.

The road was busier than it had been when they had left, with people making their way home from offices and shops. The early winter dusk was already beginning to fall, tinting everything it touched with gray and lending a curious appearance of insubstantiality to the landscape as they passed, as though the stucco walls of the narrow houses were made of fog. The high walls cast strange shadows into the street, creating wells of darkness in which the shapes of passing people took on an ominous aspect. It might have been the twilight or the children’s flagging energy, but the walk back along the alleys of St. Michel seemed far longer than the walk there.

It was with relief that Laura emerged onto the Seine, holding one of her charges by each hand. Gabrielle had protested the gesture, but Laura didn’t want to risk losing her in the growing dark. The lights from the houses on the Île de la Cité reflected in the river, creating shimmering patterns in the water.

“Stay to the side,” warned Laura, as carriages rumbled past. “You don’t want to get squished.”

“Don’t want to walk anymore,” whined Pierre-André, burying his face in Laura’s waist. Laura had to execute a hasty double-step to keep from tripping over him. “Tired.”

“Just a little bit longer,” she promised. “We’re almost home.”

“That’s not home.” If she had been a few years younger, Gabrielle would have probably been burying her face in Laura’s waist too. Instead, she tugged her hand free and folded her arms tightly across her chest. “It’s just where we live.”

Laura knew what that felt like.

When was the last time she’d had a place that felt like home? Not since she was sixteen. Her parents had never kept a traditional home; they had moved from place to place as her parents’ whims and fortunes took them. Nonetheless, by some strange alchemy of affection, her parents—her excessive, flamboyant parents—had managed to make the series of borrowed rooms and lodging houses feel like home. Wherever they had been, that was where home was. And when they were gone… well, here she was.

“Home is where the people you love are,” Laura said, surprising both herself and Gabrielle.

Gabrielle gave her a look. Laura couldn’t blame her. At that age, she wouldn’t have understood it either.

“Home was in Nantes,” Gabrielle said. It was evident that she thought Laura very dim not to understand that.

“Will you carry me?” demanded Pierre-André. “My feet hurt.”

Laura herded the children towards the railing as a carriage drew alongside them, a little out of the ordinary stream of traffic. Instead of progressing, it slowed to a stop, despite the angry cries of the wagon owner behind it.

A man leaned out of the window, ignoring the various speculations on his ancestry being offered by the man behind him. He wore a tall black hat with a broad brim. The material had a threadbare sheen to it in the light of the carriage lamps. “Mademoiselle!” the man in the carriage called.

Laura put a hand on each of the children’s backs and hurried them forward.

“Mademoiselle Jaouen!”

Gabrielle stopped and turned, leaving Laura tugging futilely at the back of her coat. The carriage glided smoothly along beside them. It was a narrow, black conveyance, designed to hold only one passenger, or two at most. “It is Mademoiselle Jaouen, is it not?”

Laura took a tighter grip on the back of Gabrielle’s coat. “The children are not permitted to speak to strangers. Good day, Monsieur.”

“But I am no stranger. I am a colleague of their father’s.” The man leaned farther out the window, arranging his thin features into what he clearly believed to be an ingratiating smile. “And this young man must be Pierre-André.”

Pierre-André slunk back against Laura’s side and buried his face in her pelisse.

“The children are very tired,” said Laura, by way of explanation and apology. “I must get them home.”

The gentleman’s smile broadened. It reminded Laura of nothing so much as wolves in fairy stories. It was not a pleasing effect. “Allow me to assist you. I have the carriage at my disposal.”

Perhaps it was the teeth, but Laura found herself ill-inclined to take him up on the offer. “And very little room in it. We would not want to impose.”

The man held out a hand. “No imposition. Not when the children of a colleague are concerned.”

Something about the way he said “colleague” sent Laura’s hackles up. She pushed the children ahead, forcing them to move. “No need, sir. The walk will do the children good.”

Gabrielle sent her a decidedly baleful look.

“Feet hurt,” whined Pierre-André.

The man settled back in his seat, contemplating the mutinous children with an appraising air that made Laura think of a chef sizing up a joint. Perhaps not for this meal, but later.

“As you will, Madame,” he said. “But do be sure to give my regards to Monsieur Jaouen.”

“Who shall I say sends them?”

The man bared his yellowing teeth in a facsimile of a smile. “Delaroche. Gaston Delaroche.”

Chapter 5

I
t was with a heavy tread and weary heart that André returned to the Hôtel de Bac.

It was twilight again, twilight to twilight, one day bleeding into the other. A candle sat unlit on the table by the door. Blundering in the vast darkness of the hall, André found the flint and lit the candle, bringing the area around him into a semblance of visibility. In the grand, high-ceilinged chamber, the single flame seemed to emphasize the darkness rather than combat it.

He had the notes from Querelle’s interrogation with him. There was still a full night’s work ahead of him, turning fifty pages of disjointed testimony into reports of varying sizes and shapes: a discrete paragraph for the ledgers of the Prefecture, a one-page summary for the First Consul’s bulletin, and a more comprehensive account for Fouché’s private use, all to be delivered by the following morning. Memory presented him with Querelle’s face, skull-like in the candlelight, the skin sagging over the bones as he uttered the words that would condemn his comrades to a like cell in a like prison, and all their hopes with it.

This wasn’t what they had fought for, he and Julie.

André took the candle with him, using it to light his way to the room he had appropriated as a study.

There was a crayon drawing of Gabrielle and Pierre-André propped over the mantelpiece, the only item of personal significance that André had brought with him from Nantes to Paris all those years ago. In it, Gabrielle was a curly-haired five, Pierre-André a round-cheeked infant.

It was the last work Julie had done before she died.

Perhaps she was the lucky one, Julie, not to have seen how it all turned out, all their brave dreams of a world reborn. How joyously they had donned the Revolutionary cockade, seizing the chance for all their philosophies to be made flesh. Ancient injustice was to be banished, feudal dues abolished, the antiquated system that pitted noble against commoner erased. The Age of Reason had at last arrived, and they were its heralds.

André had attended the National Convention as one of the Nantes delegation, raising his voice against the entrenched evils of privilege and power, while Julie put her arguments into paint, creating bold historical scenes, mostly drawn from Ancient Rome, all depicting the triumph of Republican virtue over aristocratic sloth. Her
Mother of the Gracchi
had been all the rage, eclipsing even David’s
Oath of the Horatii
in its depiction of the sacrifices for one’s country incumbent upon a good citizen.

But not these sorts of sacrifices. Nor the ones that had been demanded by the guillotine in the name of public safety. That wasn’t the sort of world he and Julie had so optimistically planned to bequeath to their children.

Oh, Julie. André was tired and lonely and his head hurt.

Draping his coat over the back of his chair, André carefully lowered the fifty-odd pages of notes he held under his arm onto his desk. He would just go say good night to Gabrielle and Pierre-André before he went back to work. It was probably nothing more than a fancy, but he hadn’t been able to rid himself of the unease that Delaroche’s words had aroused in him. He didn’t want Delaroche anywhere near his children.

André could feel the warmth of the nursery through the door even before he entered. It seeped through his bones straight into his soul, the knowledge that while outside the world might be mad, within lay peace and serenity, his children warm and safe.

André pushed gently at the door, one of the flimsy half-panels to which the last century’s aristocratic set appeared to be prone. The door gave an appalling groan as it opened, but there was no answering noise from within the room, no scramble of little feet or cries of “Papa!” There was only the crackle of coal, the click of Jeannette’s knitting needles, and the creak of her chair as she rocked back and forth beside the hearth.

Pierre-André’s hobbyhorse lay abandoned on its side; Gabrielle’s book sprawled discarded beside the hearth.

André spoke into the stillness. “Where are Gabrielle and Pierre-André?”

Jeannette didn’t bother to look up from her knitting, although the needles moved with a fervor that suggested repressed emotion. “They’re off with their governess.”

She pronounced the word as though it were something foul.

“Outside the building?”

“That’s generally where out is,” Jeannette said snippily.

Jeannette had always considered him an unnecessary adjunct to her Miss Julie, to be tolerated on sufferance because he was the means of creating new babies. Otherwise, he was simply an annoyance. An annoyance who paid her salary, but that was beside the point. Jeannette didn’t allow herself to be swayed by such crass motives as money.

“And didn’t I tell her that it was too cold out for the little mites? But, no. It was ‘Walking is good for them’ and ‘They need the exercise.’ As though the Paris air could be good for anyone, nasty, smoky stuff.”

Outside, the shadows had congealed into full darkness. Bare tree branches shifted ominously against the window, scratching at the glass. “Where did she take them?”

Jeannette lifted her needles in the air, at great peril to her knitting. “Why ask me? I’m just the nursemaid. Not that anyone bothers to tell me anything. Oh no, I’m just the one who sat by them when they were sick and nursed them through their fevers and mopped their little brows.”

Brow-mopping was always a bad sign, but André had other things on his mind. The streets of Paris were dangerous and ungoverned at night, no place for two small children. “How long have they been out?”

Jeannette looked darkly at her knitting. “Long enough that their poor little fingers will be quite frozen through. Out without a carriage, in this weather! And what’s to say that she’ll even bring them back, I ask you?” She glowered fiercely at André. “This is what comes of taking on
strangers
.”

André spoke harshly to cover his growing fear. “If you suspected something amiss, why didn’t you stop them?”

“Me, interfere?” Jeannette rocked back and forth in her chair.
Click, click, click
went the needles. “She’s the governess. I’m just their old nursery maid. Never mind that I’m the one what’s been with them since they was born, the poor motherless mites. Oh no. They have a fancy Paris governess now…. Wait! Where are you going?”

André was already halfway out the nursery door. “To find Jean,” he said tersely.

André’s heels clicked eerily on the old parquet floors, echoing off the marble walls. The old courtiers in the mural above the stair seemed to be laughing at him behind their fans, taunting, mocking. The references had checked out—but how hard would they have been to forge? Any of the families might have been bribed.

He could hear Delaroche’s voice, musing on the frailty of young flesh, like the low notes of the chorus in an opera just before the pit opened onto hell and damnation.

André’s candle cast grotesque shadows along the wall, pursuing him down the stairs, whispering warnings. Was it usual for governesses to remove their charges from the premises, and on the first day? He wouldn’t know; he had never had one. But it felt wrong. He and Jean could fan out, search the streets. The children were related by blood to Fouché; a man would have to be bold, mad, or a fool to harm them.

Unfortunately, that still left a large portion of the population of Paris.

André quickened his steps, racing to outpace the nightmare images that dogged him. He was almost to the bottom of the flight when the door to the courtyard creaked open, bringing with it a blast of cold air and a small boy in red mittens whose color even the semidarkness couldn’t dim.

André’s foot came down heavily on the marble floor. He was speechless with wonder and relief.

“Papa!” Pierre-André cried gladly, and rushed towards him as Gabrielle followed behind, too old and grand to run at him, and the governess last, tidily closing the door behind them.

“Good evening, Monsieur Jaouen,” she said, as though she hadn’t just given him the worst fifteen minutes of his life.

“Where in the blazes have you been?”

The expression on everyone’s faces turned from pleasure to alarm, except for the governess, whose entire range of expression seemed to be limited to stony and stonier. It was hard to tell which was which, but André thought she went to stonier.

Pierre-André flung his arms around his father’s waist. “We bought books, Papa! And I saw purple feathers.”

André touched his fingers lightly to his son’s head, feeling the silky softness of his baby curls. So precious. So fragile. André scowled at the governess. “What were you doing, taking the children out after dark?”

The governess very carefully stripped off her gloves, finger by finger. “It was light when we left. Sir.”

André raised a brow. “Surely one so well-versed in the natural sciences would know that when the sun rises, it also sets.” His booted foot began to tap an angry tattoo against the marble floor. “I returned home from the Abbaye to find the children gone, with no word as to their whereabouts. Not a good beginning, Mademoiselle. Not a good beginning at all.”

The governess’s eyes shifted to Jeanette, who had followed André down the stairs and was standing just behind. She looked smug.

“But I told—” Catching herself, the governess pressed her lips tightly together, her chest swelling as she breathed in deeply through her nose. It took her only a moment to compose herself. Studiously not looking at Jeannette, she said, “Forgive me, Monsieur Jaouen. I had meant to return before dark. Our outing took longer than I intended.”

She wasn’t a snitch, the governess, he would give her that much.

“What was this outing that was so vital that it had to be accomplished immediately?” He folded his arms across his chest and stared the governess down. Or, at least, made the attempt.

Gabrielle sidled up beside him, ranging herself by his side, against the new governess. It offended André’s sense of fair play. They were three against one. Four if one counted Jeannette, which André didn’t. Jeannette would never willingly join any team to which he belonged.

The governess met his gaze without fear. “I took Gabrielle and Pierre-André to a bookshop. They were badly in need of basic texts.”

Books. He hadn’t thought of books. Given that he had lived most of his life among books, it was an alarming oversight.

“Why didn’t you ask me?” he asked gruffly.

The governess chose her words carefully. “I wasn’t sure,” she said, “when the opportunity would arise.”

“You might have sent a message to the Prefecture.”

“I didn’t wish to disturb you.” The governess bowed her dark head. It ought to have been a pose of humility. Instead, André felt that he was the one being shamed. “Sir.”

“Next time,” he said imperiously, “make out a list and send Jean. He can fetch whatever you need.”

“Thank you. Sir.”

All those “sirs” were beginning to get on André’s nerves. “Why didn’t you ask for the use of the carriage?” he asked. “It would have been made available to you.”

The governess lifted her chin, looking particularly governessy. “I thought the exercise would do the children good. It isn’t healthy to keep them in the house.”

It wouldn’t have annoyed him so much if he didn’t agree. “I would prefer you keep them close to home as much as possible. There are dangerous people about.”

André half-expected the governess to argue. In fact, he rather hoped she would. A nice, acrimonious exchange might go some way towards relieving his harried feelings.

Instead, she paused, her lips pursed. She looked thoughtful. Too thoughtful. “It was, perhaps … imprudent. I will not make the same mistake again.”

André hadn’t spent the last five years interrogating people for nothing. There was something she wasn’t telling him.

“Papa!” Pierre-André was tugging at the edge of his waistcoat.

The governess distracted him from his speculations by adding, “Naturally, had Monsieur made his wishes clear, I should, of course, have respected those instructions.”

So much for the show of meekness.

André held her gaze. Her eyes were a particularly dark brown, so dark they were nearly black, fringed by lashes as thick and dark as her hair, lashes a courtesan would envy. “Consider them instructed,” he said.

Pierre-André wriggled under his arm. “We bought books, Papa!”

The governess inclined her head in assent, but there was something too regal about the motion to be called obeisance. “I will be sure to check with you before I arrange any other outings in the future.”

“See that you do,” said André, but the words felt rather like an afterthought. He had already been dismissed. Quite impressive, all around. It was enough to make one believe her claim that she had been keeping small children in check for sixteen years.

Pierre-André yanked on his waistcoat so hard that André saw stars. “Look at my books, Papa!”

Wincing slightly, André yielded to the pressure. He, after all, had not had sixteen years’ experience with children. “Your books?” he repeated, with an attempt at interest. He felt suddenly very, very tired and more than a little bit dim, all the fear and anger leaching away into fatigue. “Oh. Books.”

Right. The papery things for which the governess had dragged his children out around Paris. He really should have thought of books. It had never occurred to him. Père Beniet’s library had been like the magic cave in a fairy story; one needed only to wish on it for the right book to appear. The books had been boxed; the house in Nantes sold. It seemed impossible that it no longer existed.

“Look, look, look!” urged Pierre-André.

Blinking, Jaouen braced his hands on his son’s shoulders and looked down at the book he was holding out to him. The book was so large that Pierre-André staggered with the effort of holding it open. André took the book from him, stooping to hold it at his level.

“Those look like flowers,” André said.

“Natural history is part of the education of a gentleman,” said the governess primly.

“Which I would know if I were one?”