Лорен Уиллиг - The Orchid Affair

But he knew André. Not well, but well enough to pick him out of a crowd, even among this group of ill-assorted theatricals.

Of all the ill luck. Of all the actresses in Paris, why did Murat have to be sleeping with this one?

Assuming, of course, that it was only ill luck.

Murat wouldn’t know of Daubier’s escape, not yet. But if he saw André, or Daubier, with the troupe . . . The game would be up before it had begun.

“Silly, darling,” said Laura, in a voice unlike her own. “Your cravat is crooked again.”

She pushed him so that his back was to Murat, reaching up to fiddle with the bow at his neck. “Does he know you?” she murmured.

“Yes.”

Laura swallowed hard.

Behind him, he could hear the sound of steps on the stairs, the click of Murat’s boots, the gentle pat of Rose’s slippers.

“. . . just a short tour of the provinces,” he could hear Rose saying. And “. . . miss me?”

André’s chest was tight from holding his breath. He could hear the sounds of the coffee room with abnormal clarity: the click of Jeannette’s knitting needles, Pierre-André’s childish laughter, the slurping sound of Pantaloon drinking coffee from his saucer.

“Don’t turn around, whatever you do,” Laura muttered. “They’re right behind you.”

Breaking her own rule, she darted a quick glance over his shoulder. Whatever she saw must have decided her. Leaning forward, she placed a hand against André’s cheek. She wasn’t wearing gloves. Her hand was cold.

He lifted his own hand to cover it, both reassurance and warning.

“He can’t be allowed to see your face,” she murmured. He could feel her breath on his lips. Her eyes were very dark in her pale face, the pupil and the iris all but indistinguishable.

“Any ideas?” he whispered back.

For a moment, she hesitated. Then she tilted her head back, her dark hair tangling with the red wool of her shawl.

“This,” she said, and pressed her lips to his.

The last time Laura had kissed someone had been the summer of 1794.

She had been twenty-two; he had been the cousin of the family for whom she was working at the time, visiting for a house party. Generally, she knew better than to permit liberties. But it had been June and the garden had been in bloom. There had been a mist rising off the river and Chinese lanterns hanging from the trees. She had let him lead her by the hand, down the boxwood paths, to the place where the garden met the river, in the no-man’s-land between dusk and dawn, knowing that it meant nothing more than what it was—a stolen bit of fleeting pleasure. He had departed the next morning and she had returned to her schoolroom. She couldn’t remember his name, much less his face. There was only the shadowy recollection of a hand on her cheek, the brush of breath against her lips.

She had nearly forgotten what it was like, this pressure of lip to lip.

She would have said she was beyond such things, long since rendered immune to human desires. She intended the kiss entirely as an act of expedience. It was nothing more than a tableau, a set piece, two lovers frozen in embrace, their faces conveniently blotted from view.

That was the idea, at any rate.

André’s hand slid up beneath the hair at the nape of her neck. She hadn’t remembered this, the caress of bare fingers in her hair, disarranging her hair ribbon, making her skin tingle. His other hand slid around her waist, beneath the woolly mass of her shawl, holding her firm at the small of her back.

“Relax,” he murmured against her lips. “You’re as stiff as a board.”

“Am n—,” she began, but the word was lost as he bent her backwards and kissed her.

It was quite a thorough performance.

Laura clung to that thought, or tried to. Performance. Acting. Her arms went around his neck, holding tight. Holding to keep from falling, if she were being honest. She’d meant to monitor Murat’s movements, but she found herself closing her eyes, clinging to André’s neck, and, heaven help her, kissing him back. For the performance. All for the performance.

There were hoots and cheers from the company. Laura blinked, forcing her eyes to focus.

Murat was gone.

There were grins on the faces of many of their new colleagues. Jeannette was scowling at her knitting. Gabrielle was scowling at Laura.

Oh, dear. Perhaps they should tell the troupe that Pierre-André and Gabrielle were her stepchildren. That would explain the look of death on her so-called daughter’s face.

“Well,” Laura said. Her brain didn’t seem to want to work properly. “That served its purpose.”

“Purpose. Yes.” André cleared his throat. “Good thinking, there. That was a, er, clever ploy.”

Laura managed a crooked smile. “No one will doubt our relationship now.” The words stuck in her throat, but she forced them out. “You’re a very good actor.”

“I had an excellent leading lady.” He slid an arm around her shoulders and squeezed, in a counterfeit of affection. He was a very good actor, indeed. She needed to remember that. “Shall we meet the troupe?”

Laura nodded. “The sooner we’re away from here, the better.”

Jaouen’s arm tightened around her shoulder. “I’ll be a happier man once we’re past the gates.”

“Mmph,” she agreed, clumsily matching her steps to his.

It felt odd, and more than odd, to be so intimately pressed against someone, with all the assumptions that went with it. When was the last time someone had held her so? Years.

A sham, she reminded herself. As flimsy as a scroll of scenery, rolled down for an audience one moment and the next rolled up again, reduced to nothing more than cloth and paint.

She would have to watch herself, to be wary of such intimacies. It wouldn’t do to fall prey to her own deception. She knew what she was to him—a means of escape, nothing more.

“Well, well!” Harlequin was the first to rise to greet them, pounding André companionably on the shoulder. “I see you’ll be usurping Leandro’s roles next.”

André dropped his arm from Laura’s back, extending a hand to Harlequin. “André Malcontre. Your Inamorato is safe from me. I’m too old to play the lover.”

Harlequin cast Laura a significant look. “You could have fooled me. Madame Malcontre, I take it?”

Laura made her curtsy. “The very one. But I hope we shan’t be so formal. You can call me . . . Ruffiana.”

Harlequin pursed his lips appreciatively. “Getting into role already! You’ll put us all to shame. Except, of course, our Rose, who plays her love scenes both onstage and off.”

Rose stuck her pretty nose in the air. “Simply because I won’t play one with you . . .”

“Have you seen me serenading in the mud outside your wagon?” demanded Harlequin derisively.

The actress reddened. “I should have thought a wallow would have been just to your taste.”

“Better my sty than yours.”

“Just because some of us like elevated company . . .”

“Don’t look too high, Rose,” drawled Harlequin. “You just might fly too close to the sun.”

“Too close to the sun?” The Duc de Berry stepped forward. “I should think the sun would hide its rays in shame. You eclipse it, lady, as the sun does the moon.”

“That doesn’t quite scan,” murmured André to Laura.

Rose looked de Berry up and down, torn between a smirk and a snub. “And you are?”

“Philippe Malcontre,” Laura put in hastily, before de Berry could speak. “My husband’s younger brother. He is to understudy Leandro. He’s also very good at carrying things. Sets, props.”

“Oh. An actor.”

“Like you,” needled Harlequin.

Rose cast him a freezing glance. “Are we to stand here all day?” she demanded loftily.

Harlequin clapped his hands. “Hey, you!” he called. “Milady grows impatient. We can’t have that, now, can we?”

De Berry stepped quickly forward. “You must allow me to help you to your chariot.”

“You mean her wagon?” interjected Cécile.

“With you in it,” de Berry said, never removing his eyes from Rose, “a farm cart would look like a phaeton.”

“Poor, overused Icarus,” muttered Harlequin, as they followed Rose and de Berry out. “That’s twice in one conversation.”

“You’ve studied the classics?” Laura asked politely. She wouldn’t have thought it. He had the wiry build and chipped teeth of the former guttersnipe.

Harlequin made a rueful face. “Used to be a schoolteacher. Then I got myself clapped up for debt. And now you find me here.”

Laura nodded her understanding. “I was a governess once.”

“Pounding Latin into the heads of the ungrateful young? Then you understand how it can drive one to drink. You have your own now, though.” Harlequin nodded at Pierre-André and Gabrielle, being hustled along by Jeannette.

Laura leaned forward confidingly. “My stepchildren. André and I have only been married a year now.”

“Ah,” said Harlequin knowingly. He nodded at André as André fell into pace beside them. “Practically newlyweds.”

Laura tilted her head up at André. “It feels like it. Doesn’t it, darling?”

André threaded his arm through hers. From the outside, it looked like an affectionate gesture. Only Laura felt the warning pinch of his fingers. “As if every day were the first. May I borrow you for a moment, dear heart?”

“Why borrow what is yours to take?” said Laura extravagantly, but ruined it by skidding in the mud.

André hauled her upright again. “Why borrow what is yours to take?”

Laura snuggled against his side. “We’ve only been married a year. Look besotted.”