“Yes, you,” said Laura. She could see Delaroche’s tall-crowned hat making its way through the crowd, heading towards the exit. Where was he going? For the gendarmes? If they all fled now . . . “I have a commission for you, saucy youth.”

“A commission? For me?” Harlequin’s flexible face betrayed suitable shades of anticipatory horror. “What sort of commission?”

He made a bawdy joke out of it. The audience loved it. Laura felt her skin go clammy beneath the heavy fabric of her costume. Delaroche wasn’t heading for the exit.

He was heading for Gabrielle.

Chapter 31

“I have a message for you.” Laura’s lips were moving and sound was coming out, but she hardly registered her own voice. All her attention was fixed on the scene playing itself out by the ticket table. “A message for you to deliver.”

Delaroche had stopped beside Gabrielle and was saying something to her. His head was tilted down, the angle and the hat brim making it impossible for Laura to see his face. Not that she would be able to read his lips at this distance anyway, but it would have been nice to have some inkling of what he was saying.

Damn. Laura looked frantically at the wings. She didn’t see André. Where was he?

“Indeed, mistress?” Harlequin all but snapped his fingers in front of her face. He spoke very, very loudly. “What sort of message?”

“An extremely important one.”

Whatever it was that Delaroche had said to Gabrielle, he had said his piece. He wasn’t there anymore.

Neither was Gabrielle.

This was not happening. This was not allowed to happen. They had made it all the way to Dieppe. The boat was here, for goodness’ sake.

“They all claim it’s important,” riposted Harlequin, winking at the audience.

Laura rounded on him, her skirts swishing in a broad arc. They were very broad skirts, bolstered with a number of extremely stiff petticoats. Harlequin jumped out of the way, making a joke out of it, but he cast her a look that said quite clearly, What in the blazes do you think you’re doing?

“Hold a moment, trusty lackey,” Laura improvised hastily. “I have a message for you, but I seem to have left it in my boudoir, which is not but a moment’s walk away.”

This was not in the scenario.

“There’s many a fine thing lost in a lady’s boudoir,” quipped Harlequin gamely. “If my lady will deliver the letter with her lips, that too would serve?”

The audience loved it.

“Kiss her!” someone shouted.

“That old sow?” protested another.

Fruit flew, mercifully not at the stage.

“Entertain yourself awhile, resourceful Harlequin, with a song,” shouted Laura, “while I fetch the letter from the casket in my boudoir and send my maid, Columbine, to deliver it to you.”

“Columbine? I believe I know the wench—,” began Harlequin, but Laura was already gone.

On the stage, she could hear him gamely going into a popular song, something about the fickle nature of women.

“What’s going on?” Cécile caught her by the arm.

“An agent of the Ministry of Police is here,” said Laura, in a low voice. “Gaston Delaroche. He has Gabrielle.”

“What did you just say?”

It was André, standing just behind Cécile. Despite his costume, there was nothing comical about him now.

“I saw Monsieur Delaroche in the audience,” Laura said rapidly. “I’m quite sure it was he. He spoke to Gabrielle. Now I can’t find either of them.”

André stared past her, like someone trying to scry the future in a murky pool. “He would have had to buy a ticket from Gabrielle to get in.”

“He knows who she is,” Laura said reluctantly. “He’s tried to use her to get to you before.”

André looked past her, his eyes focusing with sudden, terrifying intensity. “That bastard has my daughter.”

Something about the very flatness of his voice made Laura shiver.

“We’ll find her,” said Laura. “We’ll get her back.”

“We’ll hear from him,” said André, with terrible certainty. There was something about the cool logic of his voice that was more dreadful than any amount of raving. “He won’t have taken her for her own sake. She has nothing to tell him. There’ll be a ransom demand; you’ll see.”

“You for her?” asked Laura, watching him closely.

“Me, de Berry, something,” André said, shrugging the question aside as immaterial. “He’ll want revenge. For extracting Daubier. That would have embarrassed him.”

Laura’s eyes flew to his. “You don’t think—”

An exchange was one thing. Revenge another. Surely, even Gaston Delaroche . . . But there was no “surely” when it came to Delaroche. She could read the certainty of it in André’s eyes.

“He reduces her value as a bargaining chip if he hurts her,” Laura argued, as much for herself as André. “He won’t endanger his main objective for a little . . . immediate gratification.”

“I wouldn’t bank on that.” André’s voice grated like sandpaper. “He can’t have gone far. I—”

He stopped as Laura’s fingers closed convulsively around his arm, her fingers digging into his sleeve. Her lips moved, but no sound came out.

“Thank God,” she breathed. “Thank God.”

Dropping his arm, she darted past him, straight at a small figure in a brown dress who was hovering at the end of the corridor, scuffing her boots and looking sullen.

Laura had never seen anything so sulky look so good. She didn’t care if Gabrielle glowered at her for the rest of her natural life, just as long as she was there to glower, all in one piece, with all of her fingers and other appendages intact.

“Gabrielle!” Laura swooped down and hugged the little girl so tightly that she nearly knocked the air out of her. “Thank goodness.”

Gabrielle wiggled her way free, looking distinctly uncomfortable.

André was making choking noises. He couldn’t seem to breathe properly. “Thank God,” he finally managed—he, who hadn’t worshipped the deity since the churches were closed back in 1792.

He held out his arms to his daughter. With a last glare at Laura, she went into them.

“We thought Monsieur Delaroche had gotten you,” he said into his daughter’s hair.

“Monsieur who?”

“The slightly crazy-looking one in a black hat.” Laura hunkered down next to her. “What did he say to you?”

Gabrielle ignored Laura and addressed herself to André. “He gave me a note for you.”

“He knew who you were,” André said grimly.

He and Laura exchanged a look over Gabrielle’s head.

“What do you think he wanted?” Laura asked quietly. “We know he must have wanted something.”

Even in his panic, André felt gratitude for her presence. He had been alone so long that he had nearly forgotten the luxury of having another adult with whom to share his burdens, someone whose judgment he trusted. Someone he could count on to be on his side, with no ambiguities, no crosses or double crosses. Her presence in his life, at this juncture, was nothing short of a sort of miracle. Heaven only knew, they needed all the miracles they could get.

“I have a feeling we’re going to find out,” he said just as quietly.

Gabrielle tugged at André’s sleeve in a bid to retrieve his attention. “Monsieur Delaroche called me by name. I told him he was mistaken, that my name was Arielle Malcontre. He didn’t say anything. He just smiled and left. It was,” she added reflectively, “a very nasty smile.”

“He is a very nasty man,” said André. He gave his daughter an extra squeeze, just because. Just because she was alive and whole and not at Delaroche’s dubious mercy. He looked over Gabrielle’s head to Laura. “We’re going to need to move quickly. We need to get out of here before he comes back.”

Laura didn’t miss a beat. She yanked off her cap and pulled loose the tie on her ruff, moving as she spoke. “I’ll collect Daubier and de Berry if you fetch Jeannette and Pierre-André. The baggage is already in a hired hack waiting for us outside the theatre.”

Gabrielle squirmed against her father’s arm. “You haven’t read the note,” she reminded him, giving Laura a hard look.

“Right. Thank you.” André took the folded piece of paper from her, breaking the seal. It was black, of course. Delaroche didn’t go in for anything so mundane as red sealing wax.

The note was short and to the point.

I have your son and his nurse. I am willing to make an exchange. I will release the boy and the maid in exchange for your surrender and that of the Bourbon traitor you have been harboring. I expect you both at the Cauchemar by midnight. You will find the boat in the fifth dock from the left. After midnight, such lenient terms will no longer apply. Gaston Delaroche, Assistant to the Minister of Police

Laura found her voice first. “Do you think he really has them? He might be bluffing.”

André wished he could share her optimism. Gaston Delaroche might be many things, but unprepared wasn’t one of them. “He has them.”

“He’s mad,” said Laura.

“I know he’s mad,” said André. “Fetch de Berry.”

“You’re not giving yourself up!”

“What else do you expect me to do?” Yanking off his false eyebrows with little concern for the real ones beneath, André relented. “I’m not going to give up without a fight. But if it comes down to it, yes, I’ll surrender myself for Pierre-André.”

“I have an idea.” Laura’s hands were balled into fists, the knuckles white. Her entire body vibrated with tension. “We take de Berry and Daubier to the Bien-Aimée as planned. We’ll be able to get help there.”

“From the sailors?” The crews of smuggling ships generally pursued a policy of not getting involved. Not unless it involved profit.