Лорен Уиллиг - The Orchid Affair

Laura seized her advantage. “You cannot expect me to confine the children to two rooms, Monsieur. There are animals who have wider cages.”

Jaouen brightened with the zeal of the born debater. “We are each of us in a cage, Mademoiselle. Some more tangible than others.”

“Man is born free, but everywhere is in chains,” quoted Laura.

A spark of recognition lit in Jaouen’s eyes at the familiar quotation from Rousseau. He raised a brow. “I wasn’t suggesting you manacle them to the nursery rafters.”

“How could I? The nursery doesn’t have rafters.”

“Surely someone so ingenious as you can find a way around such a minor obstacle.”

“Not,” said Laura demurely, “without securing prior permission from my employer. One would never want to overstep one’s bounds.”

She surprised him into laughter. He looked younger when he laughed. It filled out his cheeks and hid the dark circles beneath his eyes. For a moment, she could see him sprawled on the grass, a poetry book in hand.

“A point to you,” he said. “Well played.”

“What do I get if I win the match?”

“To keep your position.”

Ouch. Laura felt as though she had been dealt a summary slap across the face. Foul, she wanted to cry. But she couldn’t. He was, as he had just reminded her, her employer. Quite different from any employer she had ever had before, but still her employer.

Before she could muster her scattered wits to make an appropriate—and tactful—response, Jaouen made a noise of irritation and reached into his jacket. “I nearly forgot. This came for you.”

As Laura looked at him in confusion, he held out a folded note, with her name written on the back of it. There was no wax on it; it must have been delivered unsealed.

Taking it from him, Laura began unfolding it, saying, “I can’t imagine who would—oh.”

“Oh?” said Jaouen.

Laura displayed the letter to him. “I sent a query to a bookseller about a text I wanted for Gabrielle and Pierre-André. He doesn’t have it, but he knows someone else who might.”

She had no doubt Jaouen had already read the note. It was dated a good two days before. She sent a sideways glance at Jean, who was looking about as smug as a hobgoblin could look, which, considering that hobgoblins were seldom known for their modest and retiring natures, was very smug indeed. Jean must have received the note on her behalf and held on to it until he had the opportunity to show it to his employer.

No matter. There was nothing in it that even the most suspicious Ministry of Police official couldn’t be allowed to see. The bookseller was desolated to inform her that he was unable to provide her the Latin fables she had requested, but he believed that a fellow bookseller on the Rue Saint-Honoré might have the item she desired. There had been two copies the last time he had inquired. He suggested she inquire after them at her earliest convenience.

Her earliest convenience was her half day, Sunday. As for the rest . . . Two copies. Two o’clock? That seemed the likeliest explanation. She had a rendezvous with an agent of the Pink Carnation next Sunday at two o’clock in the bookshop on the Rue Saint-Honoré.

Jaouen looked thoughtfully out over the piles of boxes in the center of the room. “You might find what you need among Père Beniet’s books.”

“Père Beniet?”

“The children’s grandfather. My wife’s father.”

It was a strange way of phrasing it, but that wasn’t what caught Laura’s attention. Beniet. The name nagged at her memory. It might have been from the Pink Carnation’s files on Jaouen. His wife’s family’s name would have been in there somewhere, along with all of the other pertinent details, especially since it was through his wife’s family that he was connected to Fouché. But that wasn’t it at all. Beniet. Julie Beniet. She could hear someone saying it, with the English inflection, not the French. Candlelight glinting off claret, crystal glasses above a polished table. She had been brought in as an extra to round off a table, seated all the way at the end by the vicar’s brother-in-law. But at the top of the table, the talk was all of Julie Beniet.

Laura looked wide-eyed at Jaouen. “Your wife was Julie Beniet?”

The drawings in the poetry book, the canvases piled by the wall, that charcoal drawing of Pierre-André and Gabrielle in Jaouen’s study . . . She knew it was rude to stare, but she couldn’t help it. André Jaouen and Julie Beniet! It was like finding that Fouché had been married to Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, or Leonardo da Vinci to Lucrezia Borgia.

“The very one.” There was a tightness to his voice that ought to have signaled a warning, if Laura had been listening for it.

“I saw an exhibition of her paintings.” Laura almost added “in London,” but caught herself in time. “They were . . .”

“Awe-inspiring? Groundbreaking? Life-changing?”

“All of that.”

She might not have any artistic gifts herself, but she could appreciate them when she saw them. No wonder the sketches in the margins of her mother’s poetry had seemed to leap and dance. Julie Beniet. She had been invited to paint the Royal Family and refused. Her work had caused a brief sensation in London, both for her painting and her politics.

It was said that Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun had gone into a sulk that lasted for months.

“What—,” Laura began, and then snapped her mouth closed. There were some questions one didn’t ask, and especially not of one’s employer.

“What happened to her? Not that.” Jaouen obviously hadn’t missed her brief, betraying glance at Pierre-André. In a clipped voice, he said, “It was a fever.”

Laura had thought she was immune to embarrassment, but it had her in its grips now.

“I am sorry,” she said. It sounded painfully inadequate.

Jaouen apparently felt the same way. He pushed away from the window. “So am I. Do you have any more personal questions you wish to ask?”

Laura’s spine stiffened. “No.”

“Good. The children have my permission to explore the house. But take care where you go.”

Without another word, he turned and walked away, his boots clicking against the dusty floor.

“Papa!” Pierre-André scrambled after him, tripping over the long coat-tails of the uniform jacket.

Gabrielle, her arms wrapped around the book of poetry, gave Laura a dirty look.

So much for winning the love and trust of her charges and building a rapport with her employer.

Blast.

Proper governesses didn’t curse, but Laura had been raised in a different school.

Blast, blast, blast.

Blast. In multiples.

So much for a romantic weekend in Paris with my boyfriend.

At least the rain had let up. It hadn’t stopped entirely, but it was more of a mist than a drizzle. I furled my umbrella and dashed across the crosswalk, which seemed to operate less on lights and more on an honor system—i.e., if you moved fast enough, they wouldn’t actively try to mow you down. Slow-moving pedestrians were fair game. I made it safely to the other side and paused, panting, considering my options.

Across the street, I could still see Colin through the window of the Minerve, sweet-talking the woman at the desk.

I knew that this weekend was more stressful for Colin than for me, that I should be kind and patient and all that politician’s-wife jazz, but I still wanted to shake him. Wasn’t this weekend stressful enough without sharing space with his sister? I set off grimly down the Rue des Écoles, in what I hoped was the direction of the Musée de la Préfecture de Police. I had a miniature Lonely Planet guide with an equally miniature map buried somewhere in the bowels of my bag, but it was very hard to stalk effectively while consulting a map. Right then, stalking took precedence.

On some level, I knew that I was being cranky because I was nervous. I didn’t like Jeremy and I didn’t like what I had heard of Colin’s mother, but she was still his mother and I still had to meet her and I still wanted her to like me, because on some level her opinion still counted. At the same time, I was worried about Colin and what this weekend was going to do to him. I was also worried about Serena and how seeing her mother and stepfather was going to send her off the deep end. And of course, if Serena went off the deep end, there it would be, all dumped on Colin again, and I was worried about that, too. It was all a great big mess.

I sloshed through the rutted streets, the Parisian puddles seeping through the untreated leather of my brown suede boots. They had been very snazzy at one point, but they had not been designed for utility. I could feel my stockings soaking up the icy water. It might be March, but it felt more like January.

I was looking for the Rue des Carmes, the home of the Musée de la Préfecture de Police. Not that I trusted myself to get much work done. I was one, big churning mass of undigested emotion: guilt, anger, trepidation, indignation. Should I go back and apologize? I stopped, wondering whether I ought to turn around and find Colin and make nice. It really hadn’t been fair to walk out on him like that.

I reached into my pocket for my mobile. Something crinkled under my palm.

I pulled it out. It was the flyer for that special exhibit at the Musée Cognacq-Jay. Artistes en 1789: Marguerite Gérard et Julie Beniet.

The name Julie Beniet sounded familiar. AP art history, perhaps? On either side of the diagonal band announcing the title, the flyer showed a picture. The top was a family grouping: a woman with frizzed and powdered hair, wearing a natural-waisted dress in blue-and-white-striped silk, a filmy fichu at her throat, holding a young boy in the crook of one arm, a man seated at a desk next to her with another child. Marguerite Gérard, perhaps?