Лорен Уиллиг - The Orchid Affair

“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.”

Laura dreamed of lost princes and woke up with a headache.

Fortunately, she still had the headache powder Jeanette had given her for Jaouen the night before. Laura stirred it into her tea and set about teaching. If she was to make so elementary a mistake as bungling a simple administration of sleeping powder, she might at least make sure her teaching was satisfactory.

It was going to be an interesting challenge, communicating with the Pink Carnation when she wasn’t allowed to leave the house.

That afternoon, as Jeannette reclaimed the children for feeding, bathing, and general clucking, Laura drafted a brief note to the bookseller. On reflection, she wrote, she had decided to delay the children’s introduction to botany until they were further along in their general studies. She would be along on her half day the following Sunday to collect the Latin texts she had requested. His with the greatest expressions of respect and esteem, et cetera, Laure Griscogne.

She stuck the note just within the front cover and entrusted the whole to Jean to deliver. Monsieur Jaouen had said she could, after all. And if he were to open the note, there would be nothing at all he could find there to excite his suspicion. She only hoped the bookseller caught her double meaning. Or that the note didn’t fall out along the way. Or that Jean didn’t just drop the book on the floor of his gatehouse lair, put his feet up, and spit in her general direction.