The Orchid Affair

Chapter 10

Who was Michel de Griscogne?

André saw Mlle. Griscogne press her eyes shut, then open them again. Looking resigned, she held out a hand. “Yes,” she said simply. “How do you do, Monsieur Daubier? It has been rather a long time.”

Daubier shook his head, his jowls wobbling. “Good Lord. Michel de Griscogne’s little girl. I would never have thought . . .” Reaching out, he grasped her hand in his. It was the hand holding the book, but that didn’t daunt him. He wrung the book with her hand. “Good Lord.”

“You know each other?” André looked from his chess partner to the governess. From the expression on her face, the Lord had very little to do with it.

Daubier squeezed the governess’s hand until André could practically hear the bones crunch. He sandwiched her hand and book between both of his, holding fast as though he feared she might run away. “Know each other? I’ve known your governess since she was in swaddling clothes!”

“Maybe not quite in swaddling clothes,” Mlle. Griscogne hedged, looking embarrassed.

Daubier’s buttons rumbled with laughter. “Ha! I even did the swaddling myself a time or two.” Turning to André, Daubier explained joyously, “Mademoiselle de Griscogne’s parents were among my dearest friends.”

Mlle. Griscogne—Mlle. de Griscogne?—dipped her head in acknowledgment. “They had a gift for making themselves loved.”

Was it only André who caught the edge to her comment? He looked at her sharply, but her face was turned away.

Daubier nodded heartily in agreement. “All of Paris mourned when the news came to us about your parents. Such a loss, such a loss.”

“It was a very long time ago,” Mlle. Griscogne said, making an effort to extract her hand.

“Too true, too true! Ah, those were the days. I didn’t have this back then.” Daubier dealt a resounding slap to his overflowing waistcoat. “And your mother . . . Your beautiful mother.” Daubier shook his head hopelessly. “She was so full of life. So full of joy. To imagine her, dead and cold . . .”

“Daubier—,” André cut in.

The artist ignored him. “I wept like a baby when I heard the news. They were missed, my dear, much missed.”

“Thank you,” said Mlle. Griscogne. “I really should be—”

Once started, there was no stopping Daubier. “Good God,” he repeated. “Michel’s little girl, all grown up. Who would have thought it?”

“It is the usual consequence of the passage of years,” said Mlle. Griscogne.

Daubier snorted. “Say that again when you’ve become as old as I have. I still have the portrait I painted of you as a girl.”

For a moment she looked confused. Then a small gleam of recognition kindled in her eyes, spreading across her face, clearing the lines from her forehead, lifting the corners of her mouth in an echo of a smile.

“You painted me with a bird,” she said, looking up at Daubier for confirmation. “A yellow one.”

“A finch,” supplied Daubier, enjoying himself hugely. His own compositions were his favorite topic.

“I remember now.” Mlle. Griscogne cocked her head. As she looked up at the old artist, she looked softer, vulnerable. “He pecked me.”

The old man’s fleshy face creased into a smile. “And worse.”

“And on my favorite dress, too,” said the woman who had once been the girl with the finch.

“I painted it out,” Daubier reassured her. “Before I exhibited you at the Royal Academy.”

“Thank you,” said Mlle. Griscogne seriously. “I should have hated to appear in public in a stained dress.”

André felt left out. “I feel as though I’m missing something.”

Daubier sighed heavily. “Twenty years, my boy, twenty years.” Eyes narrowing, he squinted at André’s governess. “No. More than that. How old were you when I painted you?”

A wrinkle creased Mlle. Griscogne’s brow. “Nine, maybe? Ten?”

André tried to picture the woman in front of him at ten—a good foot shorter, hair in curls, features still unformed. It was a disorienting exercise. Governesses weren’t meant to have had childhoods, or to be painted with finches. They popped into the world full-grown with a ruler in one hand and a primer in the other. “You would have been about Gabrielle’s age.”

“Yes,” she agreed. “Just about. A long time ago, in any event.”

She would have taken a step back, but Daubier took her chin in his hand, squinting at her this way and that. “You always did have such paintable features.”

“You mean I was there to paint.” She looked to André with a rueful smile, the sort of smile he wouldn’t have imagined could have existed on that controlled countenance. It was like being introduced to an entirely different person from the woman who had been dwelling under his roof for the past fortnight. Her face looked rounder, softer. “A spare child was nothing more but fodder for the artist’s easel.”

André knew what that was like. Julie had never seen any reason why Gabrielle shouldn’t be plucked from her cradle, asleep or awake, to serve as a model when the inspiration moved her. An infant in the house was just another prop, and a far more interesting one than three apples, two oranges, and a pottery jug.

“I should be grateful my father never decided to cast me in clay,” continued Mlle. Griscogne. “He might have forgotten to crack the mold.”

Letting Mlle. Griscogne loose, Daubier waved that charge aside. “I should like to paint you again. If your employer can spare you,” he added with a little bow to André.

André raised both hands in a gesture of defeat. “For art, what cannot be spared? But I would appreciate if you would come to the house to do it rather than remove my governess whenever the inspiration so moves you.”

Daubier looked a little sheepish. “Fair enough. Call it an old man’s whim, a contrast of now and then.” He regarded André’s governess thoughtfully. “I would resurrect the finch, but I don’t think she would suit you anymore.”

“Just hand me a bat,” suggested Mlle. Griscogne. “Or perhaps a crow. Something suitably dark and sober.”

As an attempt at a drollery, it fell flat. Daubier, good old soul that he was, looked troubled.

André felt obscurely guilty, without being quite sure why. Perhaps because he had, in his own mind, equated her with just that, bats and crows and other suitably dark and dismal creatures, designed to provide a necessary but uninspiring service. Yet, when he had caught her a few moments ago, that had been flesh beneath his fingers, warm and supple, rather than a compilation of old rulers and primers glued into the semblance of the female form. He had felt a moment of surprise that the limbs beneath his fingers were made of flesh and muscle, warm beneath their layers of wool and linen. Surprise, and something else entirely, something one had no business thinking of one’s children’s governess.

What had he expected, wrought iron? André asked himself irritably. Flesh was the usual matter of human composition, even in governesses.

Daubier dealt André a friendly whack on the back that nearly sent him staggering. “I don’t know how you found her, but take good care of this one, Jaouen. Her father was one of the foremost sculptors of our generation.”

Mlle. Griscogne’s smile went sour around the edges, like milk curdling.

Why should she be valued only for her father’s sake? Feeling like a very unlikely knight errant, André heard himself saying, “That will hardly be necessary. Mlle. Griscogne informs me that she is accustomed to taking care of herself.”

“And others, too,” she said, lifting the package in illustration. “I should be getting back to Gabrielle and Pierre-André. I promised Pierre-André a story.”

“On your half day?”

“What else am I to do with it?” She grimaced at André. “Curl my hair?”

Beneath the crooked brim of her bonnet, wisps had escaped their pins to curl around her face, surprisingly vibrant.

His governess, it seemed, was full of surprises.

André realized she was waiting for him to say something. “Shall you tell them about the wolf in sheep’s clothing?”

“Or a sheep in wolf’s clothing.” Mlle. Griscogne turned to the old artist. “There’s a theme for you, Monsieur Daubier, fables turned upside down.”

“The world’s been turned upside down, so why not the fables?” grumbled the old artist. “That I should live to see this day! Michel and Chiaretta de Griscogne’s girl reduced to teaching someone else’s brats.”

“Since those are my brats you’re talking about, I’ll choose to ignore that,” André said dryly. Turning to his governess, he said, “Chiaretta?”

Mlle. Griscogne shrugged. “My mother was Venetian.”

“One of the great beauties of our age.” Daubier’s eyes had gone all misty again, so misty that André couldn’t help but look at him sharply.

Julie’s old teacher and Mlle. Griscogne’s mother . . . ?

“And a great poetess, too,” Daubier added hastily, feeling André’s gaze. “She was a beautiful person who wrote beautiful poetry.”

“She would be pleased to hear you say that,” said Mlle. Griscogne quietly.

The old man looked gratified.

André looked at his children’s governess, searching for some sign of the Circe who had been her mother.

He could see what Daubier had meant about her being paintable; one didn’t live with an artist for years without picking up a sense of what played well in oil and canvas. She had the sort of features that would have sent Julie running for her palette: high cheekbones; a long, thin-bridged nose; wide, well-defined lips.

She ought, he realized, to have been striking, but she had done everything conceivably possible to render herself otherwise. There was that infernal, ubiquitous gray that turned dark hair drab and olive skin sallow; there was the way she tucked her chin into her neck and pursed her lips to make them narrower.

Until she forgot. Until she let herself relax in a smile, a grimace, an unguarded motion. She was only plain because she made herself so.

“Do I have a spot on my face?” Mlle. Griscogne countered his gaze, and André knew, without a doubt, that she knew exactly what he had been doing.

Caught out, André went on the offensive, “Do you write poetry, Mademoiselle Griscogne?”

She hadn’t expected that. “Only when I wish to torment my charges.”

“Poetic justice?”

“In its purest form.”

“If I’m late with your wages, shall I anticipate being bombarded with ballads?”

“I prefer to persecute with pasquinades. Much more economical.”

Daubier shook his head. “No one ever doubted your technical proficiency, my dear. Not like listening to that poor Whittlesby creature. It was just the creative spark that was wanting.”

Mlle. Griscogne’s dark eyes slanted up at André. “Those who can’t,” she said, “teach.”

“There, there, my dear.” Daubier patted her comfortably on the arm. “The muse doesn’t come to us all.”

“Some of us,” said André bluntly, “don’t invite her. She’s a demanding old jade. There’s no telling what sort of havoc will be wrought when one lets the muse into the house.”

The words came out sounding far more bitter than he had intended.

“The muse,” asked Daubier, that shrewd old man, “or those possessed by her?”

“Does it make a difference?” said André dismissively.

But it did. To have one’s own relationship with the muse, any muse, might be exhilarating. To have the muse as third party to one’s marriage made for a crowded bed. There was a reason Daubier had never married, although the old man liked to volubly proclaim that it was because no woman would ever have him. André ascribed it to something else entirely. Daubier was already married—to his muse. Any other relationship would be bigamy.

He hadn’t minded—he had told himself—when Julie would get out of bed in the middle of the night because an idea was too good not to commit to paper. He hadn’t been hurt—he told himself—when she disappeared in the middle of their wedding reception. Hers was an amazing talent and he was privileged to be able to share that talent with her. He had his own work; how could he possibly begrudge her hers?

It was a moot point now, all long ago and far away. There was nothing left but a pile of unfinished canvases, linens packed in lavender, and, of course, Gabrielle and Pierre-André.

“My muse and I have come to an accommodation these days,” said Daubier comfortably. “I leave her alone until after breakfast and she lets me sleep of nights. We’re like an old married couple who know each other’s ways. Did I tell you I’ve been invited to paint the First Consul?”

André’s brows drew together at the seeming non sequitur. “No, you didn’t.”

“You can see how far I’ve fallen, my dear,” said Daubier to Mlle. Griscogne. “I’ve turned society portraitist in my old age.”

“Should I offer you congratulations or condolences?” said Mlle. Griscogne.

“Neither,” said the old man. His eyes shifted to André. “Just wish me luck.”

“When do you go for your first sitting?” André asked, but Daubier was given no time to answer.

A carriage clattered down the street, parting the pedestrians as they scrambled for cover on either side. André’s heart sank. He knew that carriage, just as well as he knew its occupant. Someone rapped sharply inside the cab. The carriage came to an abrupt halt just beside Daubier.

The window-shade rolled up, revealing the sallow visage of Gaston Delaroche.

“Good day, Gaston,” said André. “Come to play chess, have you?”

Delaroche looked right past him, over his shoulder. His lips curved up in what passed in him for a smile.

With exaggerated surprise, he exclaimed, “Ah, Mademoiselle Griscogne. Such a pleasure to see you again.”