The Orchid Affair

Chapter 6

Laura balanced her tray on one hip as she knocked on the door of André Jaouen’s study.

“Yes?” called an impatient voice from beyond the panel.

Not exactly “come in,” but Laura chose to take it as such. Grappling for the door handle, she managed to turn it without losing her perilous grip on her tray. The door lurched open four inches as the crockery clattered.

The study was as sparsely furnished as the rest of the house, boasting only a desk and a cheap set of bookshelves, crammed with a disorderly collection of volumes of varying height and girth, all with cracked spines and blurred bindings that testified to their having been read again and again. Whatever expensive art had once decked the walls was long gone. The only decorations in the room were a crayon drawing of two children and a framed broadside of The Declaration of the Rights of Man, browning and cracked beneath its protective glass.

Laura could hear the scratch of Jaouen’s pen as she pushed her way into the room. He was writing busily, an untidy sheaf of papers fanned out to one side as he wrote industriously on another, his short-cropped head bowed. He had a cowlick in the back, like Pierre-André’s.

He glanced up as she entered, pen poised. “What is it?”

“I brought your headache powder.” She would have put a flower on the tray too, if she could have found one, but that might have been a bit much. She didn’t want to do it too brown. “Jeannette did have it.”

There was a discreet rattle of china as Laura set the tray with its cup, coffee pot, and twist of white powder down on the side of the desk, a discrete distance from the sheaf of papers fanned out in front of Jaouen. Lifting the coffee pot, she began to pour into the single cup.

Jaouen eyed the small twist of white powder. “Knowing Jeannette, I can only hope she didn’t send me an emetic instead.”

Laura only just managed to keep the coffee from spilling.

“Aren’t those generally liquid?” she said, as if it were a matter of the most abstract interest. “It would be hard to disguise in a twist of paper.”

She set the pot down again on the tray, handle and spout perfectly aligned. She made good coffee. It smelled lovely, thick and rich.

She could see Jaouen breathing in the steam with appreciation. “You would be surprised at what people can do.”

“Not after years of small children,” Laura told him.

In an unconscious gesture, Jaouen lifted his glasses to rub his hand across his eyes. One ear-piece was slightly crooked.

To see Jaouen with his eyeglasses off was a bit like catching Hercules without his club, or Samson without his hair. His cheeks, speckled with a reddish growth of beard, seemed to have sunken into themselves, throwing into prominence the strong lines of nose and cheekbones.

“You need rest,” Laura said without thinking, as though he were one of her charges.

Jaouen’s lips curled. “I would never have thought of that myself.”

Apparently, tired men weren’t so very different from tired ten-year-olds. They all got cranky.

“Cream?” she asked, reaching for the dainty cream jug, the handle shaped like the wings of a bird.

“Yes. And three spoonfuls of sugar.” Catching the look Laura gave him, he laughed a rough laugh that wasn’t much of a laugh at all. “My wife always mocked me for it. She preferred to take it black.”

His wife. The divine Miss Julie. Without a word, Laura stirred the requested sugar into the cup. She made sure they were generous spoonfuls. Among other things, the taste would mask any oddity in the powder.

She could feel Jaouen’s eyes following her movements as she measured each well-rounded spoon of sugar into the cup.

Abruptly, he said, “I owe you an apology for snapping at you like that. It was uncalled for. I should have told you what my expectations were.”

Laura took her time stirring the sugar, around and around, the cream making milky swirls on the dark surface of the coffee. “It is within sir’s prerogative.”

She could hear the creak as Jaouen shifted in his chair. “Just because one has a prerogative doesn’t mean one should abuse it. We fought a revolution over that.”

Watching him, his angular face shadowed with sleeplessness, Laura came to a decision. He was trying to deal fairly with her; she could at least make the pretense of dealing fairly with him.

As she set the coffee down before him, she said, “You were not without cause. Someone did stop us on the way back. He said he worked with you.”

Jaouen’s hand stilled on the handle of the coffee cup. “Did he give you his name?”

Laura held out the white twist of sleeping powder to him, feeling like Lady Macbeth about to murder sleep. Nonsense, of course. She wasn’t baring his breast to the blade, just giving him a few hours of unencumbered slumber.

But in that sleep, who knew what dreams might come?

Oh, for heaven’s sake. Now she was mixing her Shakespeare. He wasn’t banded in a nutshell, and she wasn’t king of infinite space. Enough was enough already.

Laura surrendered the sleeping powder to her employer. “He said his name was Delaroche. Gaston Delaroche.”

Jaouen cursed so vigorously that Laura blinked at him in surprise. Heavens. Was that what they were doing in Nantes these days?

Jaouen grimaced. “Forgive me,” he said. Ripping open the paper, he shook the white powder into his coffee. “I work all day in conditions that—let us say that they do not encourage delicacy.”

Laura watched the white powder dissolving into the coffee. “There is no need for delicacy. I may spend my days in the schoolroom, but I am no schoolgirl.”

“No. I can see that.” Jaouen’s attention fixed on Laura with a suddenness and intensity that felt like a stab to the stomach with Miss Gwen’s parasol.

So that was the trick of it, thought Laura dizzily. A totality of concentration, fixed on one object at any given time. Whatever task André Jaouen had at hand, he gave it his entire and unbroken concentration. To be on the receiving end of that was, to say the least, jarring.

He shrugged, breaking the connection. “Even so. What did Delaroche say to you?”

Laura scrambled to recall herself. “He greeted the children by name.”

Jaouen gave another of those quick, keen looks, like the flash of a bird’s wing on a summer day. “He recognized them?”

Laura frowned, remembering. “He recognized Gabrielle. He called to her by name first.”

Jaouen cursed again, but softly this time.

Laura held up a hand. “You needn’t bother apologizing. Monsieur Delaroche said he was a colleague of yours. He offered us a ride in his carriage.”

Jaouen pierced her with his gaze. “Which you did not accept.”

“I did not know if you wished to encourage the association.”

There had been something off about the man, something that made the hairs on the back of her neck prickle. She didn’t mention that bit. Prickling hairs were hardly a guide for conduct. Next she would be consulting the entrails of birds, like the Ancient Romans.

Jaouen let out a quick, sharp exhalation. “Well done.” Seeming to realize that some explanation was called for, he said briefly, “I prefer not to mix my professional obligations with my familial ones.”

That was his explanation? Laura had heard better from four-year-olds with jam still smeared across their faces and bits of broken tart in their laps.

Jaouen tapped his finger against the side of the coffee cup.

Drink, thought Laura. Drink, already.

He didn’t.

“You did well to tell me of this.”

“Is there anyone else I should know to avoid?” Laura asked quietly. “Or from whom the children should be kept?”

Jaouen grimaced. “Everyone?”

Laura suspected he wasn’t entirely joking. “Shall I bring you anything else? Bread, cheese?” More sleeping powder? “Your coffee must be getting cold. I can bring you a fresh pot.”

He didn’t take the hint. The cup sat untouched, steam curling harmlessly into the air, cooling by the moment, the precious powder wasted, of use only to the bright-winged cockatoo drowned at the bottom of the cup. Laura hoped it, at least, was enjoying a good slumber.

“No need.” Jaouen sketched a quick, impatient gesture. “I didn’t hire you to play housemaid.”

“Someone has to.”

Jaouen rocked back in his chair. “Are you saying my staff is inadequate?”

“Woefully.”

“Jeannette keeps the nursery clean and comfortable,” he said, as though that were all that mattered.

“What about the rest of the house? What about you?”

Jaouen lifted both brows. “We good servants of the Revolution have no need for the baser creature comforts.”

Laura drew a finger along the edge of the desk, collecting a little pile of dust as she went. “Brutus may have been a brave man, but dust still made him sneeze.”

“Are you offering to ply the duster?”

“I’m offering to interview the maids.”

“Unnecessary,” said Jaouen. “I only entertain guests once a fortnight, and I have a hired staff who come specially. As for the rest”—with one precise flick of the finger, he made short work of Laura’s dust pile—“if to dust we must go, I can scarcely object to a bit of it on my desk.”

“One might as well say that since we are bound for the grave, we ought to take our rest in a coffin.”

“Sophistry, Mademoiselle Griscogne.” But she sensed that he was enjoying himself. He was sitting up straighter in his chair, a light in his eyes despite the purple bags beneath them. “Is that what you intend to teach my children?”

“Rhetoric, Monsieur Jaouen,” Laura corrected. “And I shall, as soon as I have the proper texts at my disposal.”

“Heaven help us.” His hand hovered for a moment over the coffee cup and went instead to the papers, which he shuffled in a way that signified the interview was over.

Why wouldn’t he drink?

“Will there be anything else?” Laura asked in desperation. How could she time the action of the drug if she didn’t see him imbibe it?

He looked up, abstractedly, a piece of paper half-lifted. Laura tried to read sideways, but all she could make out were the words “question,” “asked,” and something that looked a bit like “squirrel,” but couldn’t be unless the new administration was now after nuts.

“Tell the children I wish them a good night.” He thought for a moment and came up with, “Wish them sweet dreams.”

There was no way she could eke this out further. “Yes, sir.” She curtsied.

“Mademoiselle?” Jaouen’s voice rose behind her. “There is one last thing.”

“Sir?”

“Don’t curtsy,” he said. “It doesn’t suit you.”

And he turned back to his papers.

Laura would have curtsied to cover her confusion, but apparently it didn’t suit her. She lurched for the doorway, only to come up hard against something that wasn’t doorlike at all, although it did have the effect of arresting her progress and knocking the breath out of her. Laura found herself blinking into an expanse of blue wool, adorned with very hard and very shiny silver buttons.

“Oh, I say!” exclaimed a male voice that was obviously not Jean the gatekeeper’s, any more than that coat could belong to Jean the gatekeeper. It was a plummy, well-educated male voice. A large pair of hands reached out to catch her by the hips, although whether to steady her or assess her contours was unclear. Her contours must have passed muster, because the hands lingered. He gave a good squeeze. “I am sorry. Didn’t expect to see anyone coming out of there.”

The hands were well manicured, with smooth nails and a smattering of fair hair along the backs. They were attached to a large young man in a regimental uniform, light brown hair brushed to a sheen above a pair of ruddy cheeks in a fair-skinned face.

“No harm done,” said Laura crisply, twisting away.

“I should hate to be the cause of a lady’s distress.” The young man smiled roguishly down at her in a way that suggested he was more accustomed to causing distress than relieving it.

“The governess,” stressed Laura, “is unharmed and thanks you for your kind attentions.”

“Ah.” Instead of being deterred, the young man propped an arm up on the wall above her head. “So you’re the new governess. I must say, you’re a sight better looking than Jeannette.”

Hard to feel flattered when that was the comparison. “Thank you. Sir.”

“Philippe?”

Behind them, the chair scraped against the wooden floor. Jaouen stood with one hand braced on the desk, frowning at the new arrival. The young man’s polished appearance only served to emphasize Jaouen’s rumpled clothes and unshaven cheeks. The twin lines in his forehead grew deeper as he looked at his guest.

He did not seem pleased to see him.

“Hullo, Cousin André!” said the young man boisterously. “Aren’t you glad to see me?”

If he couldn’t tell the answer to that just from looking at Jaouen, there was no helping him.

Of course, thought Laura. This was the cousin Jaouen had mentioned during her abortive interview. She began to understand why Jaouen had warned her about him. The young man was certainly well favored, and carried with him an air of aristocratic insouciance that suggested that he was used to receiving whatever he desired—a category that included the female staff. This was one who would always choose ease over effort, convenience over conquest. It was hard to imagine anyone less like Jaouen. This man’s uniform looked like it was more for parade than service and his hair was as buffed as his buttons.

“I thought you were rejoining your regiment,” said Jaouen, and there was a warning note in his voice that even Laura couldn’t miss.

“I didn’t want to miss all the fun in Paris,” said the young man cheerfully. “It’s much more exciting here.”

Jaouen was not amused. “It won’t be so exciting when you’re courtmartialed for desertion. Did you think of that? How would your poor mother feel?”

“Gloomy, gloomy, Cousin André.” The young man sauntered over to the desk. There were two bright red spots in his cheeks that might have been from the wind or wine or a bit of both. “I have more faith in my stars than that.”

“The stars have been known to shine on others before this. There is no need to actively encourage them to do so.”

“Not my stars.” Seizing Jaouen’s coffee cup, he hoisted it in an exuberant toast. “How go the plans for the fête?” Dark drops of drugged coffee sloshed over the sides and onto Jaouen’s papers. Any moment now, and the desk would be snoring.

No, Laura thought. No, no, no.

Reaching up, Jaouen snagged the cup, placing it firmly back on its saucer. “The fête may need to be postponed.”

“Postponed!” Philippe shot up with all the indignation of a young child denied a treat.

Jaouen pressed his eyes tightly closed for a moment before turning to Laura. “You may go, Mademoiselle Griscogne. I wouldn’t want to keep you from the children.”

“Oh, I say!” intervened the young man, flapping a hand. With a nod at the coffeepot, he said winningly, “Do you think we might . . .”

“No,” said Jaouen.

“Shall I bring another cup?” asked Laura, beyond hope of salvaging the situation. When the stars chose to frown, they frowned indeed. Who knew that putting one tired man to sleep would be so much bother? Now she had two of them in the study, drugged coffee all over the desk, and none of it in Jaouen.

“Yes,” said the young man, just as Jaouen said “No.”

“Then I shall return to the children.” Laura started to curtsy, remembered herself, and nodded instead. “Good night, sir.”

“How about a brandy, then?” Laura heard Jaouen’s cousin say behind her.

“Later,” said Jaouen. “You’d best come with me. I have something to show you.”

A door closed, and over the tread of male feet, Laura heard Jaouen saying quietly, “Didn’t you get the news? Both Tante Hélène and Cousin Héloïse are indisposed.”

“Merde!” Philippe’s voice carried, echoing along the marble. “The same complaint?”

“I don’t think they will be receiving again for a very long time.”

“Well, that won’t do—,” she could hear Philippe saying, and then another door closed and the sound was blotted out.

Laura paused, tucking herself into the corner between the door and the wall in one of the endless strings of reception rooms that marched along the ground floor. She listened, but she couldn’t hear them anymore. They must have moved sufficiently far away towards the other side of the house.

Leaving Jaouen’s study, with all his papers in it, untenanted.

Perhaps the stars weren’t so very unfavorable after all. Laura cautiously made her way back along the way she had come, taking care not to creep. Only suspect persons crept; persons with nothing on their consciences walked normally. She had lost a handkerchief, or a button. She had forgot to ask whether the children liked warm milk. She had come to collect the coffee tray, to make him a fresh pot, since this one would have gone cold.

Oh yes, she liked that one. Very good, very eager, very plausible. That was she, a regular Good Samaritan. Back in her prior situations, she would never have stooped to so menial a chore. She had jealously guarded her prerogatives in the cutthroat world of the household hierarchy.

Like an echo, she could hear Jaouen’s words of half an hour before. Just because one has a prerogative doesn’t mean one should abuse it. A curious sentiment from an employer to an employee. It certainly wasn’t one to which any of her previous employers had subscribed.

The study door had been closed, but not latched. At times like this, the understaffing of the Hôtel de Bac was a decided advantage. Jeannette was with the children, Jean in his cubbyhole by the gate. There was no one to see her as she turned the latch on the study door. The door squeaked as she pressed it forward, but there was no one to hear it.

Laura hoped that whatever it was that Jaouen had to show his cousin took a very long time indeed.

The study was just as it had been before, the crowded bookshelves, the almost empty walls, the papers scattered along the desk. Without Jaouen in it, it felt, perversely, smaller, as though his presence had lent the little room depth and dimension. Strange what force some personalities had, to shape the world around them. Her own was as a nullity, scarcely creating an eddy in the landscapes through which she passed.

That was, she reminded herself, a good thing, especially in situations such as these.

Tucking her skirts close to her legs to keep them from rustling, she slipped around to the far side of the desk, to the document Jaouen had been writing when she interrupted him. It appeared to be a bulletin of some sort, a report of the latest interrogation.

Laura quickly scanned Jaouen’s summary. His writing was neat, precise, just what she would have expected from him, with no wasted flourishes or curlicues: At the Abbaye the night before, he had interrogated a Royalist agent named Querelle. Querelle confessed to a plot to kidnap the First Consul, replacing him with a member of the royal family who would claim the throne in the name of Louis XVIII. All fairly standard stuff, so far. This was to be accomplished by the work of five generals, four of whom he had named under interrogation. Arch-agitator Georges Cadoudal was known even now to be in Paris. Jaouen recommended an immediate watch be set for him. He would be known by his extreme girth and Royalist sentiments.

How did one identify Royalist sentiments? Were they emblazoned on one’s hat like a Revolutionary cockade?

The plot struck Laura as distinctly far-fetched. Kidnapping the First Consul? Expecting five generals to all work together instead of jockeying for power and selling one another out? It was a plot so naïve only a man could have come up with it.

There was no mention of lost princes.

What had the Pink Carnation been talking about in the bookshop? Laura spared a thought for the lost Dauphin. If (and it was a very large if) this Cadoudal’s cell had somehow found and secured the lost Dauphin, if the member of the royal family they intended to produce was indeed the lost Louis XVII—if, if, if—this far-fetched plot might not be so very far-fetched after all. The people of Paris wouldn’t rally for five bickering generals, but they just might for the son of Louis XVI. There was a romance already to the legend of the lost Dauphin, and hardheaded though they otherwise might be, the people of Paris loved a good romance.

But there was no reference to the Dauphin—or, for that matter, any prince at all—in Jaouen’s report.

With a feeling of deep resignation, Laura turned to the larger sheaf of papers. It was written in a different hand, not Jaouen’s, clumsy and sprawling, marred with blots and cross-outs and bits of dripped wax. It had to be at least fifty pages long, in a sort of hectic shorthand, where essential verbs appeared to be left out in the interest of speed.

Laura skimmed as quickly as she could over the first section, sweat prickling under her arms as she read, one ear trained on the door, alert for any sign of movement. The ink was cheap, the paper bad, and the coffee drops didn’t help. It was the same as what she had seen already in Jaouen’s report, except more disjointed and at greater length. Only the answers had been set down, not the questions—nor the means used to acquire them.

This Querelle insisted that the plan was merely to kidnap the First Consul until he agreed to abdicate voluntarily. Laura snorted. If he believed that, he was more naïve than she. If the First Consul didn’t agree to abdicate voluntarily—

Laura turned the page and came up short. A good five pages of the report had been ruined, soaked through with ink, as though someone’s elbow had jarred against an ink pot. It must have been a full ink pot; the paper had been utterly saturated, washing out most of the writing beneath, except for some fragments around the edges and bottom that had missed the deluge. It looked, curiously, as though the spilled ink were darker in color than the ink in which it had been written, although that might have had more to do with quantity. It had all long since dried.

Hmph. Jaouen was going to have to write up this part of the report from memory. Laura frowned, wondering how she was going to access it. She held the top sheet to the light, squinting at it, but it was no use; the spilled ink had obliterated everything in its path. All that was left were disjointed fragments—not even full words most of the time.

Laura turned the page. The stain was lighter further on. The bottom page wasn’t legible, but one could at least make out the vague shapes of what must have been words—an “and” here, or a “Consul” there, and sometimes what looked like part of “general” or “troops” (unless, of course, the prisoner had simply said “oops,” but Laura rather doubted they would bother to take that down).

She was amusing herself with that concept when something caught her attention that wasn’t amusing at all. It was the remains of a word, only four letters of it clear, the rest covered under the pervasive ink stain. “—ince.”

The blotted word was “prince.”