Delaroche paced back and forth, his boots leaving blots on the land-lady’s clean floor. “The Duc d’Angoulême has been seen in attendance on his uncle, the man they call Louis XVIII. No. I refer to the younger son, the Duc de Berry.”

“The Duc de Berry?” André’s lips quirked derisively. “The duke is a known womanizer and bon vivant, just like his father before him. Would he leave the comforts of London for a dubious expedition to Paris?”

“When a throne lies in the balance, there are few comforts a man is not willing to forego.”

“An excellent aphorism, but not exactly pertinent to the current situation.” Lifting Cadoudal’s wineglass, André tapped the base against the table. “It is de Berry’s uncle’s throne, not his own. His own situation would change little. And my sources still place him in London.”

“Hmph,” said Delaroche.

Lifting the glass, André examined the wine as if searching for lost pearls. “Did you happen to think that this proliferation of papers might not be a little too fortuitous?”

Admittedly, one fragment and one dropped bulletin was hardly a proliferation, but hyperbole was a recognized rhetorical technique. In other words, it generally worked.

André could tell Delaroche’s attention was caught. The cold eyes fastened on him like a lizard sizing up a rat for its gastronomic potential. “Explain.”

“These papers under the bed. Cadoudal is a crafty old devil. What if he seeks to shake us off his trail by sending us off in search of a will-o’-the-wisp? While we go hunting mythical princes through the back alleys of Paris, Cadoudal and his confederates have their way clear.”

Delaroche’s nose twitched as though he had sniffed something gone bad. “You believe this is a ruse.”

“A clever one,” clarified André. “A clever one, but a ruse nonetheless. Can you imagine the Duc de Berry scurrying around Paris on the off chance of mustering forces in his uncle’s favor? He would be more of a liability than an asset. And Cadoudal must know it.”

Delaroche’s fingers drummed against the desk, once, then twice, like the drumroll summoning a man to the ax. “Berry is a prince of the blood.”

“Qu’un sang impur,” murmured André, quoting the anthem that had spurred so many troops into battle against the royal forces, the same anthem that had been Cadoudal’s cue to escape. “Be that as it may, it does seem telling that this is the first word we have had as to his presence. Querelle said nothing of the kind. He spoke only of Cadoudal and Pichegru and a traitor in our own military ranks. Nor has anything about a man answering de Berry’s description come through the Prefecture. I would have known.”

Delaroche acknowledged André’s competence in that regard with an almost imperceptible flicker of his lids.

“It would be clever,” Delaroche acknowledged grudgingly. “Cadoudal has shown himself cleverer than we had realized before. But the possibility of a prince of the blood in Paris cannot be ignored—will-o’-the-wisp though it might be. The gates of Paris will be closed and all vehicles searched. Fouché cannot do anything less.” He perked up a bit at the prospect. There was nothing like a bit of prospective search and seizure to improve a man’s day. At least, if that man was a mad megalomaniac.

“For how long will Parisians put up with that?” André asked quietly. The city was already restless, the quixotic population of Paris ever ready to shift their allegiances based on the grievance of the moment. Bonaparte had never been less popular. A lockdown of the city could be spark to tinder.

That, however, didn’t concern Delaroche.

Delaroche smiled at him, revealing yellowing teeth. “For as long as it takes,” he said complacently. “If either Cadoudal or our prince attempts to leave the city, they will be found.”

Chapter 13

Having satisfied themselves that the room contained no further items of interest, Delaroche and André went their separate ways, Delaroche to lay his own intricate plans, André to write up his report.

He would be wanted at the Prefecture, he knew. Not necessarily by the Prefect, but by Fouché, who would expect André to monitor the questioning of Cadoudal’s manservant, not so much for the edification of the Ministry as for that of Fouché. André reported directly to Fouché; Dubois, the Prefect, didn’t.

It was going to be another long night.

André directed the carriage to drop him at the Hôtel de Bac, instructing the coachman to be ready to depart again within the half hour. If he was to spend the night at the Prefecture, he could at least have a change of linen.

“Did Daubier leave any message for me?” he asked Jean as he came in.

Jean spit in negation.

Fair enough. He would see Daubier next Wednesday, for the monthly meeting of the gathering of the artists. Daubier, who, it appeared, had once dandled André’s governess upon his knee.

Now, there was an image.

Shaking his head, André found himself making his way not to his own rooms, but to the suite given over to the children. Terrifying to think that such an insubstantial thing, one life—his—stood between his children and desolation.

A fire crackled in the schoolroom hearth when he entered, but the children weren’t there. He could hear their voices through the door in the far wall, the one that led to the nursery. From the sounds of it, Jeannette was scrubbing away the debris of the day, complaining bitterly about the durable nature of ink on skin.

In the schoolroom, there was only Mlle. Griscogne, her head bent over a book. Her hair was pulled back, revealing the nape of her neck as she leaned forward over her book.

It made her, thought André, seem surprisingly vulnerable, with the short wisps of hair dark against the paler skin beneath. Or maybe it only seemed so now that he had seen her without her usual armor, surprised into humanity.

That armor was off now. She was entirely absorbed in her reading, her hands braced on either side of the book, leaning forward as though intent on absorbing the words with her whole body rather than just her eyes.

Was it Aesop’s Fables? Mlle. Griscogne’s arm blocked his view, but he could see that this book was smaller and thinner. The cover was red rather than blue. It was older, too, the leather worn off along the edges.

“What are you reading?” he asked.

“Sir!” Slamming the book shut, Mlle. Griscogne twisted around. Her cheeks were flushed, warm with either embarrassment or the wind.

“Is it a romance?” He had trouble picturing his professionally prim governess wallowing in gothic fantasies. On the other hand, it appeared that little about his governess was as it seemed. Michel de Griscogne’s little girl, indeed.

“I leave those to Gabrielle.” Mlle. Griscogne kept her hand pressed protectively to the cover of the book. “Were you looking for Gabrielle and Pierre-André? If you wanted them, the children are in the nursery.”

That was just what he had wanted, but André paused for a moment. “Why didn’t you tell me that you were the daughter of one of the foremost sculptors of our generation?”

“And a beautiful woman who made beautiful poetry,” she reminded him.

“Daubier is nothing if not exuberant in his descriptions,” André agreed. “But that doesn’t answer the question.”

She lifted her hands in the universal gesture of negation. “It didn’t seem relevant to my employment. You were employing me, not my parents.”

André’s gaze dropped to the book on the desk, the gold curlicues outlining the name of the volume and the author. Good Lord, where had that come from? Memory stirred, of Julie, sitting in Père Beniet’s garden, the apple tree in bloom above them and the sun slanting through the leaves, coffee and iced cakes on a small stone table, as he read aloud to her from the poems of Chiara di Veneti.

Chiara of Venice.

What had Daubier called his governess’ mother? Chiaretta? My mother was Venetian, Mlle. Griscogne had said. Chiaretta of Venice.

Following his gaze, Mlle. Griscogne made an abortive grab for the book. “I didn’t mean to pry,” she said quickly. “Gabrielle brought the book down. I thought—”

André interrupted her. “Your mother was Chiara di Veneti?”

He still couldn’t quite get his mind around it. Those lush, sensual verses of love had been written by Mlle. Griscogne’s mother?

“It might be good for her to—what?”

“This. You.” André tapped a finger against the cover of the book, the elaborate curls that framed the author’s name. “You are Chiara di Veneti’s daughter.”

Mlle. Griscogne bit her lip. “You say it as though it were strange.”

Strange? It was inconceivable. “You don’t know how many times I read those poems. They were—”

“Awe-inspiring?” she provided. “Groundbreaking? Life-changing?”

The words sounded obscurely familiar, but André couldn’t quite place why. “All of that. What in the devil are you doing as a governess?”

Mlle. Griscogne turned away from him, busying herself picking up Pierre-André’s discarded toy soldiers. “They were my mother’s poems, not mine. One can’t eat a memory. I had to get my living somehow.”

There was a wooden box open on the floor. Picking it up, André held it out to the governess. With a nod of thanks, she dropped the soldiers into it. “How old were you when they died?”

“Sixteen,” she said crisply, closing the lid on the toy soldiers. “Old enough.”

Considerably older than his children, but still. What would Gabrielle do in a similar situation? The very thought of it made the sweat start beneath André’s arms, the prickling sweat of fear.