The Orchid Affair

Chapter 31

“I have a message for you.” Laura’s lips were moving and sound was coming out, but she hardly registered her own voice. All her attention was fixed on the scene playing itself out by the ticket table. “A message for you to deliver.”

Delaroche had stopped beside Gabrielle and was saying something to her. His head was tilted down, the angle and the hat brim making it impossible for Laura to see his face. Not that she would be able to read his lips at this distance anyway, but it would have been nice to have some inkling of what he was saying.

Damn. Laura looked frantically at the wings. She didn’t see André. Where was he?

“Indeed, mistress?” Harlequin all but snapped his fingers in front of her face. He spoke very, very loudly. “What sort of message?”

“An extremely important one.”

Whatever it was that Delaroche had said to Gabrielle, he had said his piece. He wasn’t there anymore.

Neither was Gabrielle.

This was not happening. This was not allowed to happen. They had made it all the way to Dieppe. The boat was here, for goodness’ sake.

“They all claim it’s important,” riposted Harlequin, winking at the audience.

Laura rounded on him, her skirts swishing in a broad arc. They were very broad skirts, bolstered with a number of extremely stiff petticoats. Harlequin jumped out of the way, making a joke out of it, but he cast her a look that said quite clearly, What in the blazes do you think you’re doing?

“Hold a moment, trusty lackey,” Laura improvised hastily. “I have a message for you, but I seem to have left it in my boudoir, which is not but a moment’s walk away.”

This was not in the scenario.

“There’s many a fine thing lost in a lady’s boudoir,” quipped Harlequin gamely. “If my lady will deliver the letter with her lips, that too would serve?”

The audience loved it.

“Kiss her!” someone shouted.

“That old sow?” protested another.

Fruit flew, mercifully not at the stage.

“Entertain yourself awhile, resourceful Harlequin, with a song,” shouted Laura, “while I fetch the letter from the casket in my boudoir and send my maid, Columbine, to deliver it to you.”

“Columbine? I believe I know the wench—,” began Harlequin, but Laura was already gone.

On the stage, she could hear him gamely going into a popular song, something about the fickle nature of women.

“What’s going on?” Cécile caught her by the arm.

“An agent of the Ministry of Police is here,” said Laura, in a low voice. “Gaston Delaroche. He has Gabrielle.”

“What did you just say?”

It was André, standing just behind Cécile. Despite his costume, there was nothing comical about him now.

“I saw Monsieur Delaroche in the audience,” Laura said rapidly. “I’m quite sure it was he. He spoke to Gabrielle. Now I can’t find either of them.”

André stared past her, like someone trying to scry the future in a murky pool. “He would have had to buy a ticket from Gabrielle to get in.”

“He knows who she is,” Laura said reluctantly. “He’s tried to use her to get to you before.”

André looked past her, his eyes focusing with sudden, terrifying intensity. “That bastard has my daughter.”

Something about the very flatness of his voice made Laura shiver.

“We’ll find her,” said Laura. “We’ll get her back.”

“We’ll hear from him,” said André, with terrible certainty. There was something about the cool logic of his voice that was more dreadful than any amount of raving. “He won’t have taken her for her own sake. She has nothing to tell him. There’ll be a ransom demand; you’ll see.”

“You for her?” asked Laura, watching him closely.

“Me, de Berry, something,” André said, shrugging the question aside as immaterial. “He’ll want revenge. For extracting Daubier. That would have embarrassed him.”

Laura’s eyes flew to his. “You don’t think—”

An exchange was one thing. Revenge another. Surely, even Gaston Delaroche . . . But there was no “surely” when it came to Delaroche. She could read the certainty of it in André’s eyes.

“He reduces her value as a bargaining chip if he hurts her,” Laura argued, as much for herself as André. “He won’t endanger his main objective for a little . . . immediate gratification.”

“I wouldn’t bank on that.” André’s voice grated like sandpaper. “He can’t have gone far. I—”

He stopped as Laura’s fingers closed convulsively around his arm, her fingers digging into his sleeve. Her lips moved, but no sound came out.

“Thank God,” she breathed. “Thank God.”

Dropping his arm, she darted past him, straight at a small figure in a brown dress who was hovering at the end of the corridor, scuffing her boots and looking sullen.

Laura had never seen anything so sulky look so good. She didn’t care if Gabrielle glowered at her for the rest of her natural life, just as long as she was there to glower, all in one piece, with all of her fingers and other appendages intact.

“Gabrielle!” Laura swooped down and hugged the little girl so tightly that she nearly knocked the air out of her. “Thank goodness.”

Gabrielle wiggled her way free, looking distinctly uncomfortable.

André was making choking noises. He couldn’t seem to breathe properly. “Thank God,” he finally managed—he, who hadn’t worshipped the deity since the churches were closed back in 1792.

He held out his arms to his daughter. With a last glare at Laura, she went into them.

“We thought Monsieur Delaroche had gotten you,” he said into his daughter’s hair.

“Monsieur who?”

“The slightly crazy-looking one in a black hat.” Laura hunkered down next to her. “What did he say to you?”

Gabrielle ignored Laura and addressed herself to André. “He gave me a note for you.”

“He knew who you were,” André said grimly.

He and Laura exchanged a look over Gabrielle’s head.

“What do you think he wanted?” Laura asked quietly. “We know he must have wanted something.”

Even in his panic, André felt gratitude for her presence. He had been alone so long that he had nearly forgotten the luxury of having another adult with whom to share his burdens, someone whose judgment he trusted. Someone he could count on to be on his side, with no ambiguities, no crosses or double crosses. Her presence in his life, at this juncture, was nothing short of a sort of miracle. Heaven only knew, they needed all the miracles they could get.

“I have a feeling we’re going to find out,” he said just as quietly.

Gabrielle tugged at André’s sleeve in a bid to retrieve his attention. “Monsieur Delaroche called me by name. I told him he was mistaken, that my name was Arielle Malcontre. He didn’t say anything. He just smiled and left. It was,” she added reflectively, “a very nasty smile.”

“He is a very nasty man,” said André. He gave his daughter an extra squeeze, just because. Just because she was alive and whole and not at Delaroche’s dubious mercy. He looked over Gabrielle’s head to Laura. “We’re going to need to move quickly. We need to get out of here before he comes back.”

Laura didn’t miss a beat. She yanked off her cap and pulled loose the tie on her ruff, moving as she spoke. “I’ll collect Daubier and de Berry if you fetch Jeannette and Pierre-André. The baggage is already in a hired hack waiting for us outside the theatre.”

Gabrielle squirmed against her father’s arm. “You haven’t read the note,” she reminded him, giving Laura a hard look.

“Right. Thank you.” André took the folded piece of paper from her, breaking the seal. It was black, of course. Delaroche didn’t go in for anything so mundane as red sealing wax.

The note was short and to the point.

I have your son and his nurse. I am willing to make an exchange. I will release the boy and the maid in exchange for your surrender and that of the Bourbon traitor you have been harboring. I expect you both at the Cauchemar by midnight. You will find the boat in the fifth dock from the left. After midnight, such lenient terms will no longer apply. Gaston Delaroche, Assistant to the Minister of Police

Laura found her voice first. “Do you think he really has them? He might be bluffing.”

André wished he could share her optimism. Gaston Delaroche might be many things, but unprepared wasn’t one of them. “He has them.”

“He’s mad,” said Laura.

“I know he’s mad,” said André. “Fetch de Berry.”

“You’re not giving yourself up!”

“What else do you expect me to do?” Yanking off his false eyebrows with little concern for the real ones beneath, André relented. “I’m not going to give up without a fight. But if it comes down to it, yes, I’ll surrender myself for Pierre-André.”

“I have an idea.” Laura’s hands were balled into fists, the knuckles white. Her entire body vibrated with tension. “We take de Berry and Daubier to the Bien-Aimée as planned. We’ll be able to get help there.”

“From the sailors?” The crews of smuggling ships generally pursued a policy of not getting involved. Not unless it involved profit.

For a moment, Laura looked as though she intended to say something, but whatever it was, she thought better of it. “Yes,” she said circumspectly. “From the ship’s crew. I know at least one of them has a personal grudge against Monsieur Delaroche. They will help us.”

There was something she wasn’t telling him, but André didn’t have the time to suss it out. “And what if Delaroche retaliates against Pierre-André?”

“Do you really think, if you followed his instructions, that he would keep his word?”

It didn’t help, hearing his own fears put into words. He knew she was right. But he still didn’t want to hear it.

André dropped his wig on the floor. His head felt oddly naked without it. “Once again, it seems I have little choice but to trust you.”

Laura bit her lip. It wasn’t the first time. The bright red paint that coated her mouth was half-eaten off already. “I haven’t led you astray so far, have I?”

“No.” The one word took more of an effort than it should have. “Let’s go deposit de Berry at your ship. And then I’m going to carve Gaston Delaroche into kindling.”

“Gaston Delaroche?” Daubier was holding a rolled-up scroll under one arm, a piece of scenery waiting to be deployed. “What about him?”

Laura looked to André before answering. “He has Pierre-André. And Jeannette.”

Antoine Daubier, the urbane man who never got involved, lifted his deformed right hand. “Then what are we waiting for? Monsieur Delaroche and I have a score to settle.”

At that moment, André wouldn’t have been in Delaroche’s shoes for all the world.

It took little more than a moment to drag de Berry from his comfortable perch on the other side of the wings. Cécile had taken the precaution of keeping de Berry’s role small. So small, in fact, that it was practically non-existent. He walked on and walked off again at some point during the third act. That point varied based on whether he remembered or not.

They were aided in their efforts by the fact that Rose was onstage.

“Come along,” said Daubier, moving with more energy than André had seen in months. “We’re going.”

“I have plans for the evening,” de Berry protested. “Very pleasant ones too.”

“We have a ship waiting to take you to England,” André said tersely.

De Berry threw Rose to the wind without a second thought. “Why didn’t you say so? Where is it?”

It wasn’t actually as stupid a question as it might have seemed. It was more than conceivable that their conveyance might have been hidden in an inlet, somewhere away from the main waterways.

“In the harbor,” said Laura. “With the other ships. Please, Your Highness, do hurry. We have a bit of a situation. . . .”

The hack was waiting, as Laura had promised. The five of them squeezed into the interior, Gabrielle on André’s lap.

André checked his pocket watch. He had discarded his padding along the way, and his doublet hung in loose folds. “Half an hour since Delaroche gave Gabrielle the note. How long do you think it’s been since he took them?”

Unsurprisingly, it was Laura who answered. “They were both still there until just before the curtain went up. Delaroche must have smuggled them out, left them in a carriage, come back, and given Gabrielle the note.”

“You mean they were right outside while we were wasting time debating?”

“We don’t know that,” she countered. “It’s only a guess. And knowing Monsieur Delaroche, I imagine he came well armed and well guarded. We’ll do better to surprise him with reinforcements. He should,” she added thoughtfully, “be very, very surprised.”

“Who are these reinforcements of yours?” André asked suspiciously.

“She means me, of course,” said de Berry, stretching. “I’ll be glad to do what I can for the little lad. Within reason, of course.”

It wasn’t personal, his tone implied. It was just that royal skin was worth more.

“You will get him back, won’t you?” said Gabrielle to her father. Her brows drew together just the way his did when he was worried. From the way she was squinting, he suspected she would soon need spectacles.

“Yes,” he said, with more assurance than he felt.

“I didn’t really want him gone,” Gabrielle said in a small voice. “Not really.”

“No one thought you did,” said Laura bracingly. “It’s just the sort of thing one says. Little brothers can be very trying. I know. I’ve taught many of them.”

“I just hope he’s trying Delaroche,” André murmured.

“We’re almost there,” said Laura. “Look. The Bien-Aimée.”

She pointed to a ship, which to André looked entirely indistinguishable from the ones on either side of it. He had put his spectacles back on, but it was too far and too dark to properly read the lettering.

“Have you been on it before?” he asked.

Laura’s lips pressed together in a way he hadn’t seen for a very long time. It was her governess look, all prunes and prisms and unsweetened lemons.

“Yes,” she said.

Her references had claimed she had been with a family in the interior. What had she to do with a yacht sailing the Channel ports?

“When?”

Like a barometer, sensing tension in the atmosphere, Gabrielle looked from one to the other.

Laura didn’t look at him. “We seem to be stopping,” she said. “Gabrielle, mind your footing getting out. It’s a long way down.”

Why in the hell wouldn’t she meet his eye? Who were these people who were to help them? It shouldn’t matter, André told himself. As long as they got Pierre-André back.

But it did matter.

“Who are these people?” he asked in an undertone as he lifted his daughter to the ground and joined Laura on the pier. “Why won’t you look at me?”

“They’re English,” she said brusquely, in the tone of one making the best of a bad situation. “Cécile made the arrangements, not I.”

“But you made the arrangements with Cécile.”

Laura made a wafting motion with her hand. She still wouldn’t meet his eye. “They’ll help you rescue Pierre-André. Isn’t that the important thing?”

“We don’t know that yet.”

She looked at him then. Her lips twisted in another expression he hadn’t seen for quite some time. The bitter smile of someone who knows the joke is on her. “Trust me. They will.”

Quickening her pace, she stepped ahead of him. A man had jumped down to greet them. She said a few words to him in rapid English. She spoke softly, but André could hear enough to tell that her English was swift and fluent and entirely unaccented.

She had said she was fluent in English. In English and Italian and German and Latin and the devil only remembered what else.

So why did he feel so sick to his stomach all of a sudden, with fears he couldn’t name?

Whatever she had said did the trick. She beckoned to them to follow her onto the ship. A gangplank was lowered for them. André hung back, taking Gabrielle’s hand to help her up the steep slope. That was what he told himself, in any event. Some other force was at play. Something felt off about the situation.

A trap? But why? He had long ago discarded any apprehension of Laura’s being in league with Delaroche. The guard had spoken English; she had spoken English to him. It would be deceit of elaborate proportions for Delaroche to have arranged a kidnapping only to have his own lover bring him aboard by false pretenses.

True it might be that women had given their bodies before and lied all the same, but he couldn’t believe it of her, not of Laura.

But, something—something was off. His instincts didn’t lie.

Holding Gabrielle’s hand, he stepped onto the deck just in time to hear the end of an introduction taking place.

“—who will be conducting you safely back to England,” Laura was saying, gesturing from de Berry to a man who stood just beyond, his back to André.

“Delighted,” said de Berry. “Charmed to make your acquaintance. I’ve heard a great deal of you.”

“I am equally charmed to have you on board, Your Highness.”

The second man’s voice sounded familiar, although André couldn’t quite place it. He had a faint memory of that same voice, but speaking in French.

They were all speaking English. André’s English was rusty, but it was good enough to get the gist.

“We’re quite relieved to see you safely off French soil, Your Highness,” the unknown man was saying. Turning to Laura, he gave her a brief salute. “Well done, Miss Grey! An excellent first mission.”

André stopped trying to place the voice. There were other more pressing matters.

“Miss Grey?” he demanded. “Mission?”

“I can explain,” said Laura.

As soon as she said it, she wished she hadn’t. When one had to promise that one could explain, it generally meant one couldn’t.

“Later,” she added.

After all, there was the pressing matter of rescuing Pierre-André. It wasn’t that she was trying to wiggle out of making explanations she didn’t have.

“I look forward to it. Miss Grey.” The look André gave Laura cut right through her. His eyes narrowed on the man behind her. “Selwick?”

They knew each other?

Lord Richard Selwick held out his hand with an expression of genuine pleasure. “Jaouen! I heard you were involved in this business.”

As Laura watched, completely speechless with shock, the two men wrung each other’s hands. “I haven’t seen you since aught-two,” said André. “I’d heard you retired.”

“I’ve been on honeymoon,” said the Purple Gentian blandly, dodging the question. “You switched sides.”

André didn’t look at Laura. “Say more that I was forced to play a hand I had hoped to keep secret.”

“In other words,” said Daubier, stepping forward, “our conspiracy was discovered. It was,” he added, “through my carelessness.”

Laura looked at Daubier with surprise. It was the first time she had heard him say such a thing. Recovering herself, she gestured from Daubier to Lord Richard. “Lord Richard, this is Monsieur Antoine Daubier, the painter. And that young lady over there is Mademoiselle Gabrielle Jaouen.”

“Mademoiselle.” Lord Richard bowed with debonair flair.

Laura automatically turned towards André to share a smile and encountered nothing but stone. That’s right. They weren’t on smiling terms anymore.

“We are forced to throw ourselves on your mercy,” said Jaouen to Lord Richard. “In fact—”

“Fair enough,” said Lord Richard convivially. “I’m glad to have you on board. In both senses. And you, Miss Grey. Well done!”

Laura brushed aside the praise. “We have a problem,” she said brusquely. “Monsieur Delaroche has Monsieur Jaouen’s son.” It felt strange referring to André by his last name, but stranger to call him by his first. She was Miss Grey again—English operative, governess, spinster. The woman who had curled up naked next to André Jaouen didn’t exist anymore. The woman he had thought he loved was a lie. “He wants the duke in exchange.”

“And your blood, no doubt,” Lord Richard said soberly, turning to André. “How long ago did he take him?”

“Roughly an hour ago. His nursemaid is with him. Will you help us?” asked Laura.

“It will be my pleasure,” said Lord Richard, without mockery. “No man should make war on children.”

A powerful emotion passed across André’s face. “I’m in your debt, Selwick.”

The former Purple Gentian was instantly all action. “Don’t start tallying the IOU until we get him out. Where is he being held?”

“Delaroche has him on a boat called the Cauchemar,” Laura jumped in. “Here in the harbor.”

There was a glint in the former Purple Gentian’s eye that boded ill for Gaston Delaroche. “What do you say we give Monsieur Delaroche a little surprise?”