The Orphan's Tale (14 page)

"
Oh no," she said. "I don't mean that at all. It's unusual to find a man, especially - forgive me - one of your age and rank, willing to credit any woman with sense enough to run her own life, much less think intelligently. You puzzle me."

He frowned and raised the fork to his mouth.
After chewing and then taking a swallow of ale, he said, "But why? Surely all men aren't such idiots as that!"

"
You'd be surprised," she said.

"
Maybe I would," he admitted with a sigh. He frowned down at his plate. "I seem fated to be surprised by people."

"
We all are.  People are never predictable. It's foolish to expect them to be."

"
No," agreed Malet. "That's quite true." He frowned thoughtfully into space and lifted his glass of ale. "But I don't know enough about people," he said with a touch of sadness coloring his voice. "I don't understand them. I can deal with criminals. I have been successful at it, but then it's the way I was raised. I know all about them!

"
But the others, the decent, helpless folk: they elude me. They always have. I wonder if it's too late to learn. I wonder sometimes if I should even try..." He sounded very wistful and even a little forlorn.

Elise did not move, and she hardly breathed.

Malet was still frowning, and his voice had become very quiet. "Sometimes I feel as though I am walking among a foreign people," he said. "As though, while I know their language and their customs, I am not really one of them."

Elise's smile faded.
She knew that he was telling her something he had never before admitted to anyone. The thought filled her with sudden warmth, for she had come to care for him very much. She felt like one who has coaxed a shy, half-wild creature to eat from her hand. She schooled her face to calmness and looked down at the table. "Why do you think that?" she asked.

Looking up, she saw that he had suddenly realized what he had just said.
He looked for a moment like a fencer who has discovered that his guard is disastrously lowered. He pushed his supper aside. His eyes were shuttered when he looked up at her, his expression carefully neutral.

"
Why?" she repeated gently, touched and worried by his obvious distress. "Why do you feel that way?"

He took up the papers lying on the corner of his table and shuffled them.
His cheeks had more color than usual.

"
It doesn't matter," he said at last with a fairly convincing show of indifference, except for the catch in his voice. "It was a foolish thing to say. I beg your pardon for wasting your time."

"
Why, if it's how you truly feel?" she asked. "I can understand."

"
Some truth is best not spoken," he said. "It can annoy - "

"
But I promise you didn't annoy me," she said.

When he would not look up, she decided to let the subject drop.
She motioned to Marie, who took his plate and cup. "Bring Monsieur some more ale, child," she said, and then, turning to Malet as Marie moved away, "And, M'sieur, I apologize for troubling you with my questions. You're obviously tired from a long day, and you spoke at random. I assure you, it is forgotten."

"
I am a bastard, Mme. de Clichy," he said flatly, not looking at her. His voice was subtly altered, as though he were forcing the words out, afraid of her reaction. "My mother was an opera dancer. They tell me she was beautiful. My father was a-a nobleman who liked to collect beautiful things. De Colbert was his name. He saw my mother and wanted her. He - promised to marry her, and she, loving him, trusted him. I was conceived, and then she discovered that he was already married, with a family in Normandy. She killed him, was sentenced to die, and bore me in prison. She was executed immediately after. She was twenty-one."

When Elise did not comment, he continued in a lower voice,
"My father's family - the de Colberts - didn't want a murderess' bastard brat. They said so in a letter. I was raised in the prison."

If Malet had looked up, he might have been surprised by Elise's expression, but he kept his eyes lowered.
His voice was carefully expressionless. "It was an unsurpassed education for a Police officer," he said with an attempt at a smile. "You learn so many things in those places: you learn all about crime, filth and the ways to kill or - or cause pain - If you listen to the lies, you start to think that you can only rely on yourself. You learn everything but how to become a friend, and how to be an ordinary mortal, no matter how desperately you want it. If you're wise, you stop wanting it after a while."

He frowned down at his hands and said,
"It's a lifetime's endeavor... The prison permeates everything, unless you learn to look up at something else. But then, having looked up, it's difficult to look down again. And there's always the fear that you might fall back into the filth." He fell silent.

Elise dropped all pretense of casualness and looked straight at him.
"My dear M'sieur!" she said. "Did you believe I'd think less of you?"

"
It's happened," he said after a moment. "The - the sins of the parents, they say... My past is a matter of public record, anyhow - Everyone knows about it. I - " He broke off with an almost pathetically helpless gesture of his hands.

"
But you left the prison and became 'an ordinary mortal', as you call them," Elise pointed out.

Malet raised his eyes to her face.
"Do you think so?" he asked quietly. "Look again, Mme. de Clichy: I am not one of them! I protect them: it's what I set out to do years ago, and I don't regret it. But I know as well as you that I am not of the same stamp as them, and I never will be. They know it, too."

"
You know, Inspector," Elise said quietly, "Just then you sounded like an eagle trying to apologize for the fact that his wings make it impossible for him to be a mole. Your 'past', such as it is, makes no difference at all to me: I count myself fortunate to have made your acquaintance, and I would like to keep that acquaintance, if you will permit me."

He looked down again and kept his eyes lowered as Marie brought another cup of ale.
He raised the cup to his lips with a hand that shook slightly. "The good fortune is mine," he said quietly.

He adroitly changed the subject the next moment by presenting a new letter from Charles, which had come in with the morning's dispatches.
Malet always delivered them to her at suppertime.

This letter was a lively and affectionate one, as had been the others.
Charles had the ability to write as he spoke. It was as though he were sitting at the table with them, describing the activities in the Bois de Boulogne. He wrote of the people who shared his patrols, and recounted some incidents that had both Elise and Malet laughing. Yvette came over to hear the letter, too, and then Claude, Marie and Alcide as well.

After
they had all read the letter and exclaimed over it, he watching her with an expression that made her pause, the subject they had first discussed was long passed, and Elise did not know how to reopen it without giving offense.

And
yet she wished to speak of it again, for that glimpse of hurt and vulnerability had touched and softened Elise more than anything he could have said to her. She had suddenly realized that she was beginning to love him.

**  **  **

The moon was circled by a faint ring of dark rainbow and half hidden behind a veil of fine clouds. Elise slid from her bed and went to her escritoire. She had set Charles' letter there. It might help to banish this mood. He was skilled in the art of flirtation: most well-bred men of his age were, but his letters and sallies had the added spice of sincerity.

He had finished by writing of his thoughts concerning the distance between them.
She had not shown it to the rest of them. Now she reread the paragraph and smiled.

I think of the miles that separate us, my dearest Elise, and wish that I could somehow take the wings of the swallow that nests beneath my window and fly to you. Were there some way to send a message by him, some way to give you but a part of the happiness I feel when I fill my thoughts with your loveliness and wit, then I would be happy indeed. As it is this letter, poorly phrased though it may be, conveys all my heartfelt regard. Could it but assure me that all is well with you, Elise, then I would indeed rest content.

She chuckled and folded the letter away. Poorly phrased, indeed! His birth and upbringing were obvious in every line. It was a pity, she thought, that she could not love him. And almost exhilarating to think that she had somehow found a way to love again, even though, the prospect of a new love brought back to her, all unwanted, the memory of terrible unhappiness.

The wind was chilly when she opened her windows and looked out over the street.
It was as though something were calling to her, awakening all the old longing and grief.

But it had been over seven years!
Not all men were like Raoul! Surely she could lay the past aside now and reach again for happines
s
Y

She was too restless to sleep.
She had been a fool even to try. Perhaps a cup of tea with warm milk in it. She opened her armoire and took out her pink brocaded wrapper, donning it with the ease of many years of acquaintance, not seeing the fine lace at the neck. She opened her door and stepped out into the hallway.

The inn was silent, except for loud snores from one of the guest rooms.
She went softly down the stairs and into the kitchen. It only took a moment to get the stove hot again, and to assemble the makings for a cup of tea.

She had just sat down at the wide, scarred table to sip her tea when the sound of quiet footsteps, moving down the stairs, made her look up.

Malet stood in the doorway, watching her with a slight frown.

"
Inspector?" she whispered.

He bowed.

"What are you doing up at this time of the night?" she demanded.

His smile flashed for a moment.
"I am going hunting," he said, coming into the kitchen. She saw that he was carrying a sword and a pistol. He came into the kitchen. "Why are you awake, Mme. De Clichy?"

She lifted her eyebrows at him.
"This is my inn and I have the right to be here," she said.

Malet
's smile grew slightly dry. "So you do," he said with another bow. "But - this is a sincere request - lock the doors after me and don't let anyone else go outside tonight." He saw the puzzlement in her expression. "The hunt is going to be a wide-ranging one," he said. "And the prey can be dangerous. Lock the doors."

She hesitated on the brink of a half-jest, but stopped.
"Yes, M. l'Inspecteur," she said. She watched him rise, take up his sword and pistol. "Inspector?"

"
Madame?"

She spoke through a throat that was suddenly tight with foreboding.
"Please - if the prey is dangerous, then take care for yourself. You have value for many people."

He smiled again, and was out the door.

DRACQUET REQUESTS AN AUDIENCE

Elise awoke late the next morning and watched the wind chase skeins of clouds across the blue morning sky while she drowsily tried to remember what had happened the night before to worry her. Remembering with a sudden chill of fear, she arose, dressed, and went downstairs.

Yvette and Claude were in the kitchen, talking urgently together.
She froze and then went to them. "Is all well?" she asked.

Claude was beaming.
"Most well!" he said. "Would you believe it? Those monsters - the killers who-- Well, never mind. They were all caught! All of them! The Police set an ambush, led by Chief Inspector Malet, and got them all!"

"
Was-was anyone hurt?" Elise asked.

"
Some of those murdering scoundrels were," Yvette said. "But the newspapers report no one else hurt."

"
Malet," said Claude. He raised his eyebrows at Elise's expression. "A scratch only," he said.

"
That is a scratch too many!" Elise said.

"
He was smiling when they spoke with him," Yvette said. "He said he was fine."

Elise considered and then smiled and asked for breakfast.
Her smile reassured Claude and Yvette, and the inn hummed into its ordinary routine.

Yvette came to her later that morning while she was spicing the chickens for that night's supper with the news that Constant Dracquet had sent some of his men by.

"It was René Benoit, and he was as offensive as usual," she said. "He's the sort of cad who tries to kiss chambermaids."

"
I'd rather deal with him than with his employer.  M. Dracquet makes me very nervous. Did Benoit try to kiss you?"

"
Not this time," Yvette said. "I gave him something to remember me by the last time he tried two days ago. I think he learned his lesson." She smiled reminiscently. "No, he just said that I was to tell the 'Police Officer' that M. Dracquet wishes to speak with him at eleven o'clock tomorrow morning at his house."