For a moment, they faced each other, sizing each other up, coming to terms with their arrangement. She looked very different with her hair down, the shawl brightening her face. But the rest—the intelligence, the humor—that was all entirely hers, unchanged. Lucky for them.

“We were very fortunate to have you as our governess,” André said slowly.

Mlle. Griscogne—Laura—shrugged, uncomfortable with praise. “I did tell you that my program was comprehensive.” Without quite looking at him, she moved rapidly away. “I’ll go fetch Monsieur . . . I mean, Papa.”

He saw her squat down by Monsieur Daubier in the overhang of the wagon, speaking to the old artist in a low, earnest tone. One hand came out from under the enveloping wool of the shawl to cover Monsieur Daubier’s. The left hand. There was something inexplicably tender about the gesture. She looked, he thought, like the daughter she claimed to be, Cordelia kneeling by Lear.

Hopefully, this drama would end more happily than that one had.

As André watched, Daubier allowed her to help him up, rising heavily to his feet. Antoine Daubier was a tall, heavyset man, but hunched over as he was, they looked nearly of a size. Laura braced an arm around the old man’s back, supporting him. He leaned heavily on her, but she never faltered.

André moved quickly to the artist’s other side, but the look Daubier gave him stopped him short. “I told her you should have left me.”

“You know that’s rot,” said André.

Laura sent him a warning look.

“We need you,” she said to Daubier. André was amazed by the calm of her voice. “Our story makes very little sense without you with us. I’m no actress.” André could have disputed that, but kept silent. “Nor is Monsieur Ja—André. But you? You can design sets that will make them weep with gratitude.”

“How can I, when I can no longer hold a brush?” Daubier’s voice was hoarse, but there was a flicker of interest in his eye that hadn’t been there before.

“You still have your left hand. If Milton could write blind, can’t you paint left-handed? It might not be the same, but think what a broad canvas you have to practice upon. A set is a very different thing from an easel. Unless, of course,” she said meditatively, “you think it’s too much of a challenge for you. You’ve been painting portraits for so very long now. . . .”

“I cut my teeth on landscapes,” protested Daubier. As if realizing he’d been tricked, he let his chin fall back into his chest. “I’ll think about it,” he mumbled.

“Cécile tells me our first play is to be set in Venice,” said Laura. “In a great palazzo. Rather like that place where you visited us, in ’82.”

“You mean when your mother . . .”

“Was having an affair with the nephew of the Doge?” said Laura calmly. “And Papa was commissioned to create a series of sculptures for his garden? Yes.”

“It was a pretty little palace,” said Daubier musingly, “right on the canal. When the sun set, the stones looked golden. It would be hard to reproduce just that shade. . . .”

“Would you mind getting the door?” said Laura demurely to André, casting him a look of triumph.

“With pleasure.” He swung it open, inclining his head as she passed, giving credit as it was due. Daubier still looked like a nag put out in the knacker’s yard, but he was standing a little straighter than he had before, his eyes a little more alert. He was abstracted, but it was a reverie of color and shade. They weren’t out of the woods yet, but the immediate crisis had been averted.

“At last!” someone cried. A young woman came bustling over to them, her sprig muslin too light for the weather, her hair pulled back with a fashionable bandeau. There was an impish charm to her mobile face “Laura’s André! We’ve been longing to meet you!”

Laura kept her arm through Daubier’s. “Cécile, this is my father, Monsieur Désormais, and my husband, André.”

Seen closer, Cécile wasn’t so young as she had appeared. Beneath the youthful curls, her brown eyes were surprisingly shrewd. André saw her quick, concerned glance at Daubier. “Your father . . .”

“Was injured by the fall of a set. It was a most unfortunate accident,” said Laura. “The troupe refused to let him stay on. That is why you find us as we are, looking again for work at this inhospitable time of year.”

Cécile nodded approvingly. “I am sorry for your misfortune, but your loss is our gain. I don’t know what we should have done without you.” She held out a hand to André, taking his in a firm grasp. “Welcome, Monsieur, to our troupe. You see us in a sadly reduced state. It is very fortuitous that you should be out of work, just as two of our company were unexpectedly forced to take their leave of us. We have been half-distracted, trying to figure out how to divide the roles to maintain our engagements.”

André raised both brows. “Forced?”

“By cruel circumstance.” From the smug set of her mouth, André doubted there was anything the least bit circumstantial about it. “Our Capitano was taken ill last night. The doctors do not believe he should be moved for at least a month. Our Ruffiana has elected to stay with him, to nurse him back to health. So you find us two actors short. To make matters worse, Ruffiana also served as our wardrobe mistress. But now we have a new wardrobe mistress and your charming Laura to be our Ruffiana.”

“The shrewish matron?” André looked quizzically at Laura.

“Don’t cast stones until you hear your own part. Philippe is to understudy the heroic lead and help Mons—er, Papa, with the scenery. You shall take over the roles of the Captain and the Doctor.”

The blowhard and the pompous ass. Point taken.

“I believe I can manage that,” said André mildly. “Although I always fancied myself more of a Scaramouche.”

Cécile cocked her head. “That might be arranged. Our current scenarios don’t call for it, but if you wish to contrive another, you can submit it for the consideration of the troupe. We work on a democratic model, you see. Within reason.”

“Meaning some of the demos are more important than others?”

Cécile put a finger to her lips. “Shhh. Don’t tell them. We do like to maintain our illusions.” Putting her hands on her lips, she turned and surveyed the company. She indicated an elderly man whose few wisps of hair were so white that they showed yellow against the pink of his pate. “That man at the trestle over there, the one in the pale blue satin, that’s our Pantaloon. He’s the head of the troupe. Others have come and gone but Pantaloon has been here since the beginning.”

Pantaloon. The blustering father figure of the Commedia dell’Arte. This man looked like a good bluster would send him toppling right over. His skin was so pale it was practically translucent.

Cécile waved an insouciant hand. “You can just call him Pantaloon. We all do. He’s been Pantaloon for so long, I doubt he remembers what his real name was. Next to him, in the green velvet, that’s our Leandro. He plays all the young lovers. Balcony-climbing, sword fights, mooning about ladies’ chambers, that’s his job.”

Like Pantaloon, Leandro didn’t seem best suited for his role. He was a gawky youth, with arms and legs too long and thin for his frame. The long hair he wore loose about his face did little to disguise a bad case of adolescent spots. André only hoped that makeup and costume would compensate for what nature had failed to provide.

Mlle. Griscogne had never said the Commedia dell’Aruzzio was a successful theatrical troupe.

So much the better, thought André philosophically. Their own incompetence wouldn’t show to such disadvantage.

Next to Leandro sat a short, ferret-faced man in a brocade jacket. “That’s Harlequin. He rooms with Leandro and doubles as our cook when we’re living rough. He may not look like much, but he cooks divinely.” Cécile’s mouth twisted. “And then there’s Rose.”

“Rose?” There didn’t seem to be anyone else in the room.

Cécile nodded to the stairs leading up to the second story. “Ah. Pat on her cue, as always.”

On the landing, a woman stood, her profile to the stairs. Blond curls tumbled down her back in artful disarray. She wore a gown more showy than stylish, flounced and frilled within an inch of its life. Long earrings, confections of enamel and seed pearl, bounced against her curls. She stood directly beneath the window so that what little light there was fell on her upraised face.

“That’s our Rose,” said Cécile acerbically. “Never misses an entrance.”

“Your ingénue?” guessed André.

“The very one.” It didn’t take much to guess what Cécile thought of her colleague. “Inamorata. Both onstage and off.”

Rose’s carefully contrived pose wasn’t intended for their benefit. As they watched, a man followed her onto the landing, drawn like a wooden horse on a string. His uniform coat was unbuttoned, his stock untied. It took very little imagination to guess what had been going on beyond the landing.

Rose held out both hands, her fingers all but hidden among lace ruffles. The man took them in both of his own.

And André took a step back, away from the stairs.

“What is it?” whispered Laura. “André?”

He slid an arm around her waist, drawing her into the crook of his arm, the pose of an old, married couple. She came stiffly into his embrace; he could feel the tension in every line of her body.

He set his lips by her ear. “Do you know who that is?”

She gave a short shake of her head. To an outsider, it might have looked like a nuzzle.

“Murat,” he whispered. “Bonaparte’s brother-in-law.”

Not just Bonaparte’s brother-in-law. The Governor of Paris. The man who had ordered all the gates of the city closed and all carriages searched. It was Murat who had presided over the “trials” of Querelle, Picot, and the rest. Admittedly, the intelligence was not his own; he was only a figurehead.