Лорен Уиллиг - The Orchid Affair

Jaouen untangled himself without injury. Daubier’s welcomes, Laura remembered, took some getting used to. A lesser man might be smothered.

“You would think it had been weeks, instead of only last Sunday,” Jaouen said dryly. “Are you that eager for our rematch?”

Daubier threw his arms wide. “Forgive me, my friend, for my tardiness! It wasn’t trepidation that stayed my steps, but circumstance. I was waylaid by an unexpected guest. As, I see, were you,” Daubier added, making a quick about-face as he noticed Laura. His waistcoat made ominous creaking noises as he swept a bow, forcing his tummy into directions it had not been designed by nature to go. “My dear Madame. I beg your pardon. I had not seen you.”

Which was just the way Laura had wanted it.

“Sir.” Laura bent her knees in a hint of a curtsy, head angled down.

Leaning to one side, Daubier peered shamelessly beneath her bonnet brim. “Do I know you? You look familiar.”

Laura backed away. “I don’t think—”

Jaouen stepped forward, settling the issue with his accustomed efficiency. “Let’s not waste time on guessing games. Daubier, this is my children’s governess, Mademoiselle Griscogne.”

“Griscogne?” The old man’s eyes lit.

What had made her think it would be a good idea taking her own old name? Because she hadn’t thought she would meet anyone who knew her. They were supposed to be dead, gone, scattered.

Daubier rose up on the balls of his feet, like a griffon rearing on someone’s escutcheon, crimson and gold against a field azure. “Did you say ‘Griscogne’? Good God, it’s been years since I heard that name!”

He stared shamelessly at Laura, with the license afforded by both his age and his profession. He took in her severely cut dress and her crooked bonnet, her sensible pelisse and her tightly drawn hair.

Laura felt an ache at the back of her throat as his expression of pleasure turned to one of puzzlement.

Incredulously, as if hoping it weren’t the case, he exclaimed, “Not Michel de Griscogne’s girl?”

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.”