The Orchid Affair pc-8

by Лорен Уиллиг

  At the far end of the room, a disheveled figure in a ruffled shirt, topped only by a waistcoat, held forth to a distressed-looking proprietor.

  Oh Lord. Laura prevented herself from rolling her eyes to the ceiling. Just what she needed. That poet. Again. Did he plague all the bookshops in the city, or only the ones she intended to patronize?

  Taking a firm grip on her reticule, Laura marched down the length of the shop. After waiting more than a week for this rendezvous, she certainly wasn’t going to be deterred by a longhaired windbag with more sleeve than sense. Laura itched to have a proper conversation with the Carnation or the Carnation’s agent. This whole business of keeping one’s eyes and ears open and seeing what turned up was maddening. If they would only tell her what they wanted to know, in plain English with no nonsense about lost princes and horrid novels, she might actually be able to do something about it.

  Laura bore down on the poet and the proprietor. The bookseller cast Laura a hunted look over the poet’s shoulder as the poet waved a small volume dramatically in the air.

  The poet struck a tragic pose. “You call this an illustration!”

  Laura called it more of a blur as it wafted past her nose.

  “Perfidy! Base perfidy! This is nothing less than a betrayal of the muse herself, whose divine trail we all must strive to follow.”

  “If you don’t like it,” said the bookseller grimly, “you can take your custom elsewhere. Ah, Mademoiselle!” He seized on Laura’s presence with gratitude. “If you will excuse me, sir, I believe this lady—”

  “With these rank scribblings profaning the pure prowess of my poetry? I crave—nay! I require!—the counsel and guidance of one of those members of the gentler sex whose minds are more attuned to the lilting call of Beauty’s song.” The poet also seized on Laura. On her arm, to be precise. “Madame—oh, whatever your name is! Would you lend your invaluable aid to the incalculable cause of pure poesy?”

  “Er—,” began Laura, very ready to tell him just what he could do with his poesy and his wayward hand. For an effete poetic type, he had a surprisingly strong grip.

  “Those blundering oafs in the backroom have made an unpardonable hash of it.” The poet thrust his book at Laura’s nose. Laura sneezed at the scent of ink and glue. “Don’t you agree, Madame—oh, whatever?”

  Laura’s tart reply died on her lips. Pressed inside the book, just where she could see it, was a white card embossed with the image of a small, pink flower.

  “Unpardonable,” Laura agreed. “Achoo!”

  “Come!” The poet towed Laura towards a curtain at the back of the room. “Tell those oafs what they can do to improve their performance. Perhaps the gentle voice of a lady may reach those hardened hearts that the humble plaint of a mere poet has failed to move.” In a lower voice, utterly unlike his unusual singsong drawl, Whittlesby said, “Come with me. Quickly.”

  Laura went, stumbling over her skirt. When he said quickly, he meant it.

  In the back room, a large machine was buzzing and clanking. The air was acrid with the scent of ink and glue. An apprentice bustled busily about, feeding long rolls of paper into the great machine. On a long table, open pots of glue sat beside a litter of pages and pieces of cardboard and leather. The print shop conducted a varied business. In addition to the pages waiting to be sewn together into books, there were also piles of printed broadsides, advertising the performance of a new troupe of comedians, the Commedia dell’Aruzzio, performing a repertoire drawn from Molière, the classical dramatists, and the Commedia dell’Arte. Laura suspected that translated to people dressing in parti-colored hose, chasing one another around the stage with sticks, while quoting the odd line purloined from the better known of Molière’s comedies.

  “Is it meant to rattle like that?” Laura stepped prudently away from the printing press, keeping her skirt clear of the vats of ink and glue.

  “You should be grateful it does. No one can hear us over the din. If anyone asks, we’re consulting over a verse translation of Latin exercises for small children.”

  “Or the illustrations in your new volume of poetry,” Laura reminded him. Whittlesby acknowledged the point with a slight bow. Laura looked around, bemused. “Is every bookshop in Paris in this network?”

  Whittlesby raised both brows. “I have no idea what you mean. I only come here for the inspiration afforded by the birthplace of the books we hold so dear.” Dropping the pose, he said, in a businesslike tone, “What have you heard?”

  Oh no. They weren’t playing it that way. Now that she had a proper human being at her disposal, even such a one as Whittlesby, she wasn’t saying anything until she had heard what she needed to know. “What did you want me to find? Lost princes are a highly indirect instruction.”

  “But the Abbey bit was clear, I imagine,” prompted Whittlesby, as if he were talking to a very small child.

  If he’d had any experience with children at all, he would know that was never the way to get results.

  “Very,” said Laura, refusing to be prompted.

  Whittlesby moved to stand beside her, holding the book open in front of her as though consulting over the set of an illustration. “There is a plot afoot—not our plot,” he added pointedly, “to depose the First Consul and replace him with a prince of the blood.”

  “Surely an outcome to be desired?” Laura kept her head bent over the book. The illustrations really were quite poorly done. Julie Beniet’s careless sketches in the margins of Venus’ Feast had contained three times their power.

  Whittlesby turned a page at random. “The idea is excellent, the execution is execrable. Fouché has already arrested several of the lesser conspirators. If they get Cadoudal, the whole jig is up.”

  “What did you want me to do?” Laura traced the flank of a satyr with her finger. A smudge of ink came off on her glove.

  Whittlesby pursed his lips as though contemplating the picture. “There are rumors that the prince, whichever he may be, is already in place. It might be Artois, it might be his son, de Berry. Neither has been seen in his usual haunts. All we know is that a prince of the blood is to plunge into place and take up the crown once Bonaparte has been oh-so-conveniently whisked away. We have instructions”—Laura noticed that Whittlesby didn’t say from whom—“to get this prince out of Paris before the whole plot blows sky high.”

  “How do you know it will, er, blow?”

  Whittlesby shook his head. Out of character, his movements were entirely different from those of his assumed persona—quick, direct, to the point. “If they were to do it, it were best it had been done quickly. By dawdling, they’ve killed their chance. Now that Fouché knows of the plot, he won’t rest till he’s found the whole. It’s all over before it’s begun. There’s no more chance of good, but it can cause us a good deal of harm.”

  “Where do I come into this?”

  “If the prince is found, Jaouen will be the first to know. We need to get there before Fouché. Any word, any hint of a rumor, we need to know first.”

  “Why can’t you simply ask Cadoudal?”

  Whittlesby pulled a face. “Cadoudal is running for his life right now. His entire existence relies on not being seen. Even if we could find him, he might not tell. There is”—Whittlesby paused, weighing his words carefully—“a difference of philosophy between our two organizations.”

  “I see,” said Laura. As she had been told during her training in Sussex, the French Royalist groups and those sponsored by the English government didn’t always see eye to eye. Their goals might overlap, but they weren’t necessarily the same. They were constantly tripping over one another’s toes. “And the others in his organization?”

  “Don’t know where the prince is,” Whittlesby said grimly. “Only that he’s here. In Paris.”

  “That was all that came out of the Abbaye,” confirmed Laura. “A man named Querelle was put to the question.”

  Whittlesby nodded as though he knew what she was talking about. “Jean-Pie
rre Querelle. Go on.”

  “There’s very little to go on with. Querelle confessed a plot to kidnap the First Consul and replace him with a member of the royal family. Five generals, one of whom was this Cadoudal, were to manage the military coup. Four of them were to be shipped in from England, one suborned here.”

  “Moreau,” provided Whittlesby. Laura looked up at him quizzically. “It’s no good. Fouché is already onto him. They’re simply waiting to give him enough rope to hang himself. Anything more?”

  “There was something about a prince, but ink had been spilled across those pages.”

  “Ink,” Whittlesby repeated flatly.

  “Lots of it.” Laura’s nose wrinkled at the stench of it. In quantity, ink could be a very noxious thing. “Someone had an accident with an inkwell. I was able to make out the word ‘prince,’ but little more.”

  “No names?”

  “No names,” Laura confirmed. “At least, none that survived the ink spill. If Jaouen knows of any, they’re in his head, not on the page. I saw a copy of the official intelligence report. There was nothing there, either.”

  “Either they know and Fouché is reserving the information for his own purposes”—Whittlesby clasped his hands behind his back, pacing to and fro between machines—“or they don’t know. My money is on the latter. Querelle was low on the chain. He wouldn’t be told any more than he needed to know. But if they get Picot or Cadoudal . . .” He came to an abrupt halt in front of Laura. “Keep your eyes open. If you hear anything at all about any further arrests, notify us at once. Employ the usual channels. The code will be . . .”

  He paused for a moment to consider.

  “A request for Latin texts for Picot, Greek for Cadoudal, and a basic grammar book if the name is one I don’t recognize,” Laura supplied promptly. “If the information is such as to warrant an immediate rendezvous, I’ll ask for a botanical treatise. That is, after all, where carnations are most likely to be found.”

  “Excellent!” said Whittlesby, with such approval that Laura found herself in danger of preening like a cat on a sunny windowsill. “I can be found most evenings at the Sign of the Scratching Cat in the Rue de la Huchette. If anything happens.”

  He didn’t bother to specify what he meant. Discovery? Danger? Anything encompassed a broad range of possibility.

  Laura pursed her lips and gave a very governessy sniff. “I trust I shan’t need to use that information.”

  Whittlesby quirked a brow. “I, too. But it doesn’t hurt to be prepared.” He gestured towards the door. “You’d best leave before me. Be sure to look suitably harried and complain about mad poets.”

  “I shall do it most sincerely,” said Laura, liking him despite herself. “Until we meet again, Monsieur.”

  “Mademoiselle!” Whittlesby’s sleeve fluttered.

  “Yes?”

  Whittlesby grinned at her. It was a charmingly boyish smile, and Laura could see why the ladies of the First Consul’s court cultivated him, despite his execrable poetry. “Here,” he said, holding out a flat, brown paper-wrapped package. “I nearly forgot to give you this.”

  Laura regarded it with some trepidation. “Surely I don’t merit my own copy of your latest volume of poetry?”

  “I wouldn’t be so cruel,” said Whittlesby. “You’ll find it contains Aesop’s Fables. In Latin.”

  Laura took the parcel from him. “How fortunate I am that the shopkeeper happened to have just the book I was looking for.”

  Whittlesby smiled tiredly. “Fortunate, indeed,” he agreed. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some poetry to compose.”

  Laura tucked her package neatly under her arm. “And I have children to teach.”

  They shared a long look of mutual understanding, two soldiers in the same regiment. It was, Laura thought, rather nice to have comrades-in-arms. It was an experience she hadn’t even realized she had been missing until she had it.

  Laura resisted the urge to salute as she left.

  When she looked back, the poet was engaged in a vigorous and loud debate with the printer about the type set of his latest volume of poetry, An Ode to the Pulchritudinous Princess of the Azure Toes (and other poems) by the Author of Hypocras’ Feast, an Epic in Thirty-two Parts.

  “But I must have the illuminated capitals!” the poet was exclaiming. “How else can I properly demonstrate the celestial fairness of my glowing goddess of podiatric perfection?”

  Did he ever worry that he might start to speak that way regularly?

  Laura slipped out the shop door, wondering how one maintained that sort of pose so competently for so long. She was a fine one to talk, she realized. It was nothing more than she had done all these years in her role as governess. And yes, one did start to speak that way regularly.

  If she were very good and completed this assignment successfully, perhaps the Pink Carnation would let her be something else next time around. But what? Laura’s inner cynic jeered at her. She would make a very unconvincing courtesan.

  Still, it would be rather nice to have the chance to try.

  Laura contemplated the prospect as she wandered out into the sunlit street. There was a holiday atmosphere about the day, despite the cold. On a Sunday afternoon, the Rue Saint-Honoré was crowded with Parisians making the most of the clear weather before Monday called them again to their respective trades. Above the clatter and chatter, she could hear the faint peal of church bells, so familiar and yet so foreign. Only a few scant years before, those bells had been silent, the churches closed in favor of the deity Reason. With the First Consul setting the tone, the priests were beginning to come back, the churches to attract congregants again, but Sundays were still days of leisure rather than worship: a day to shop, a day to promenade, a day to rest between labors. She was just one among many—another laborer using the day of rest to run errands, shop, and enjoy the sunshine. Everyone was dressed in Sunday finery, a veritable rainbow of bright colors and cheap trimmings, reflecting in a multicolored blur in the plate-glass windows of the shops and cafés that lined the street.

  Laura looked in each with interest as she passed. Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun had had her studio not far from here; she wasn’t part of Laura’s parents’ set, but they had taken her there once or twice as a child. She remembered coming with her father and Antoine Daubier to the Café de la Régence to watch them play chess, the two of them finding it a great lark to sit her down at their seats and have her play, first for one, then the other, as the proprietor brought wine for them and macaroons for her.

  Some things hadn’t changed. The Café de la Régence was crowded with dedicated chess players. As Laura walked past, the crowd shifted and she caught sight of a man standing just outside, checking his pocket watch. He had left his hat off, and the sun glinted bronze off his short brown hair. He was turned slightly away from her. She could see the cowlick in back, so inappropriately boyish for a member of the Ministry of Police.

  The crowd jostled Laura sideways, towards Jaouen. He looked up from his watch. Laura raised her hand in greeting.

  “Monsieur Jaouen!” she called breathlessly.

  She hadn’t seen him since their run-in in the storage room. His comings and goings had been at odd hours, although she had more than once heard movements in the nursery at night. The first time, she had assumed it was an intruder. Taking up her poker, she had inched open her door and crept out into the schoolroom, only to find Jaouen, still cloaked and spurred, silhouetted in the open nursery door, watching his children sleep. Lowering her weapon, Laura had slipped back into her room, easing the door shut behind her. Some moments weren’t meant to be disturbed.

  Jaouen turned at the sound of her voice, squinting into the sun. Already regretting the impulse, Laura did the only thing she could do. She raised her hand in greeting. “Good afternoon, sir—oooph!”

  Her greeting turned to a grunt as the man behind her bumped into her, sending her careening forward. She rocketed into her employer, landing with a thump agains
t his chest. Or perhaps that thump was the parcel hitting the ground. Laura didn’t know, because she couldn’t see. Her bonnet was knocked sideways over her eyes, the brim mashed somewhere between her face and Jaouen’s shoulder.

  Jaouen’s arms closed around her, his body breaking her fall. The wool of his coat was rough beneath her cheek, warm from the sun and his skin.

  Laura heard Jaouen’s voice, somewhere just above her left ear, amused, if rather breathless. “A simple ‘hello’ would have sufficed.”

  She could feel the vibration in his chest as he spoke, pressed together as they were through all their layers of fabric. It was the sort of position in which no good governess allowed herself to be put, not even in the street, not even in the middle of the day. It was too intimate, too undignified, too . . . Too.

  Laura wriggled. “You can let me go now,” she said in muffled tones.

  Jaouen released her to arm’s length, his hands lingering for a moment on her upper arms, steadying her. “A unique way of saying good day, Mademoiselle Griscogne. What do you do for farewell?”

  Laura could feel the press of his fingers, even after he let go. “I am so sorry. I didn’t mean to . . . I’m afraid I lost my balance.”

  “One often does after being pushed.” Jaouen moved to block her from the bustle of the street, using his only body as a shield. “Think nothing of it. I’m simply glad you fell onto me instead of the window. The patrons of the café might not have been amused to find you as an additional pawn.”

  Laura’s bonnet brim stuck up at an odd angle, knocked askew by Jaouen’s shoulder. She tugged at it ineffectually. “It was my own fault for stopping in the middle of the street. I should have known better than to . . . Oh, bother. My parcel!”

  “You mean the large, heavy thing that assaulted my foot?” Jaouen leaned over to retrieve the package. It had been wrapped in brown paper, but none too carefully. The string had snapped when the parcel had fallen. “More books, Mademoiselle Griscogne?”

  “It would be very difficult to teach without them,” she said quickly, reaching for the volume.