The Orchid Affair pc-8

by Лорен Уиллиг

  But there it was. She wanted to be back in that dreadful, drafty, creaky wagon where the roof leaked when it rained and the bed wasn’t quite large enough for two. She wanted to be on the damp ground by a smoky campfire with burnt stew if it meant that there would be an arm around her shoulders and a familiar voice murmuring things not meant for the rest of the company into her ear. She wanted to go back to being not Miss Grey or Mlle. Griscogne, but Laura of no surname at all.

  She wanted to be with André.

  Her mother had been wrong. Love wasn’t a grand explosion. It didn’t blaze onto the scene like a comet; it crept in like a spy in the night, muffled and disguised, worming its way in, not revealing itself until it was too late to do anything about it. Love didn’t attack; it infiltrated. The poets had gotten it wrong. Laura held them all personally accountable.

  There were quiet footfalls on the deck behind her. Laura didn’t need to turn around to know who it was. She knew his tread by now, the same way she knew the way his hair smelled after three days on the road, the different tones of his voice, his trick of pulling off his spectacles with one hand.

  “You ran off,” he said.

  Laura didn’t turn. She didn’t want to look at him. She’d prefer to remember him as they had been before, not as he had looked when Lord Richard had uttered that first Miss Grey. Shouldn’t she be allowed to keep just one little memory intact, like a pressed flower in a book?

  Pressed flowers were, by their nature, dead. Laura grimaced at the thought. So much for sentimentality.

  Without looking at André, Laura said, “I lied to you.”

  She could feel the weight of him settling on the rail beside her. “I know,” he said equably. “I lied to you, too.”

  Laura kept her eyes on her hands, determined to make a clean breast of it. “My real name is Laura Griscogne. For the past sixteen years I’ve been Laura Grey. The Pink Carnation recruited me last summer.”

  She had thought he would ask about the Pink Carnation, about her work. He didn’t. “Your parents?”

  “They died in Cornwall, not in Lake Como. Otherwise, the rest is the same.”

  “I see,” he said. She felt the wood of the railing give a bit as he shifted his weight, turning towards her. “Sixteen years of governessing?”

  She was reminded, suddenly, of their first interview, André in his cloak and boots in the grand salon of the Hôtel de Bac, with rain silvering his hair and sparkling on his glasses. She swallowed hard, not liking the way memory made her heart twist. They had been different people then, and they would go off and be different people again—that was all there was to it.

  “I wouldn’t lie about my credentials,” she said stiffly.

  “No,” said André dryly, but there was something else below it. “I don’t imagine you would. Not about something important like that.”

  If she didn’t know better, she would have thought he was joking.

  “You were my first mission,” she blurted out. It seemed important to remind him of why they were there, of how she had betrayed him. It was too quiet, too calm.

  André raised both brows. “I am honored.”

  Laura turned so that her position mirrored his, each with one elbow on the rail, face-to-face. He looked tired, she thought. She hadn’t heard it in his voice, but it was there in his face, even in the shadows. It was there in the lines on either side of his mouth and the bags beneath his eyes.

  Laura knew that if she touched his face there would be the shadow of stubble on his chin. She could practically feel it prickling against the pads of her fingers, more real to her than the damp wood of the railing. She scrubbed her hand against the side of her skirt.

  “You shouldn’t be,” she said tartly. “If they’d thought you more important, they would have given you a more experienced operative. Instead, you were saddled with me.”

  “To my great good fortune,” said André.

  “Don’t mock,” said Laura, and her voice broke on the sharp end of the word.

  To her surprise, André’s hand covered hers, warm against the damp, cold air. “I’m not. Do you really think I’m not grateful?”

  Gratitude. The poor cousin of love. “You don’t have to be.” Laura tried to tug her hand away, but it was caught between his hand and the rail. “I would have done what I did no matter what.”

  “Would you?”

  Laura yanked free, scraping her palm on the rough wood. “Why must everything be a question?” she demanded in frustration.

  “Why are you so afraid of the answers?”

  “I’m not a—”

  His mouth covered hers, cutting her off before she could finish the word. His lips were warm on hers. Despite herself, Laura leaned into him, luxuriating, for one last time, in the familiar taste and feel of him, in the comfort of his fingers in her hair and his other hand solid and steady on the small of her back.

  Gently breaking the kiss, he framed her face in his hands, caging her. “Why did you come with us from Paris?”

  Laura had been dreading this one. “Because the Pink Carnation asked me to,” she said honestly. “She wanted me to see the Duc de Berry safely to England.”

  “And why did you sleep with me?” His voice was neutral, but his eyes were intent on her face, belying the casual tone. “Was that for the Pink Carnation too?”

  Laura’s pride piped up, reminding her that it wasn’t too late to save face. She could lie, say it was for the mission, nothing more—just a ruse to convince people they really were man and wife. They would wander off their separate ways, each to their separate lives.

  Laura bit her lip. “No,” she admitted. “If ever I was honest, it was in that.”

  André’s arms eased around her, drawing her gently to him.

  “There’s honesty and there’s honesty,” he said into her hair.

  Abandoning common sense and pride, Laura squeezed him back. They clung to each other like shipwrecked souls hanging on to the last spars of the ship.

  “What are we going to do?” she asked, her voice slightly muffled.

  Loosening his grip, André rested his cheek against the top of her head. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “I wish I did. What I do know is that whatever I do, I want to do it with you.”

  Since that was rather the way she felt, it was hard to quibble with that. She had been on her own for too long to mesh her life with someone else’s gracefully. She knew herself for what she was: opinionated, stubborn, set in her ways. She knew there would be days when an arm around her might feel more confining than comforting, occasions when they would strike the wrong sorts of sparks off each other rather than the right kind, and nights when she would deeply regret the loss of her own bed and the undisputed rights to the covers.

  But when it came down to it, she’d rather fight for the covers with André than be queen of her own bed without him. It might occasionally be difficult, but it would never be boring.

  There was just one thing. Laura drew a deep breath. “I’m not Julie.”

  André looked at her in confusion. “Pardon?”

  “Julie,” Laura repeated. It came out somewhat more acidly than she had intended. “The love of your life. I can’t simply step into her place and fill her spot in your life. I’m not Julie. I couldn’t be if I tried.”

  André let out his breath in a tired sigh. “I wouldn’t want you to be. Julie was the love of my youth. We were both very young. We hadn’t become the people we are yet.” He paused, frowning, as though trying to decide how much to say. “It was . . . different. But you . . .”

  “Yes?” Laura prompted.

  André shook his head, acknowledging defeat. “It’s different. You’re different.”

  For an articulate man, he wasn’t doing particularly well. “I did rather get that,” said Laura. “It’s different. But is it love?”

  André rested his hands on her shoulders, giving the question earnest thought. “I want to go to bed with you every night and wake up with you every m
orning,” he said. “I rely on your advice, even when I don’t always agree with it. I wonder what you’ll say about things, how you’ll react to people, what your opinion will be. You’ve become part of my landscape. A large and important part,” he clarified. “Not just a tuft of grass or the odd tree stump. You’re more like a river.”

  “A river,” repeated Laura.

  “Necessary for life to exist. How’s that for declarations for you?” André grinned suddenly. “And then there are all the other bits.”

  “The other bits?”

  “The curve of your hip, the line of your jaw, the way your hair curls on the nape of your neck.” His finger traced the fall of her hair down her neck, making her shiver. He drew back, raising a brow. “And I will admit, I am rather partial to your bosom.”

  “Just rather partial?”

  “Extremely infatuated?” Sobering, André looked down at her, his eyes intent on hers. “So there you are. Take it as you will. Is that love?”

  “It will do,” said Laura, and found she was smiling at him despite herself, smiling so hard she was dizzy with it. “It will do very well.”

  When they could speak again, André looked quizzically at her. “Simply for the sake of equity . . . Do you love me?”

  “Well enough to spare you flowery speeches.” Laura smiled at him—a slow, seductive smile with more than a little bit of Suzette in it. “Shall I show you instead?”

  “By all means.” André’s eyes were very, very bright as he leaned toward her.

  “André, my boy!” boomed a baritone voice.

  André cursed. Laura bumped her head on his chin. Clumsily disentangling themselves, they turned to face Daubier, who was regarding them with arms folded and both eyebrows raised.

  “And Laura! What would your parents say?”

  Now, that was an inapposite question if ever she had heard one. Knowing her parents . . .

  “‘What took you so long?’” she suggested.

  André chuckled. She could feel the gust of his laughter against her hair. She leaned against him, contemplating how nice it was not to have to pretend. They weren’t pretending anymore, were they? It was odd and rather wonderful.

  Daubier was never one to allow a grand scene to be spoiled by reality. It was seldom he got to play the angry parent.

  “André, my boy, am I going to have to force Laura to make an honest man of you?” Daubier considered for a moment. “I’ve got that wrong way around, haven’t I?”

  “No,” said André dryly, “I’d say that’s just about right.” He looked down at Laura. “Will you?”

  “Only if the children agree,” said Laura, only half jokingly. “I refuse to be a wicked stepmother. It’s such a cliché.”

  “Pierre-André won’t be a problem. He’s been calling you Maman for a month,” André pointed out, sliding an arm around her waist. “As long as you don’t interfere with his ambition to own a parrot, he’ll give you no trouble at all.”

  “What about Gabrielle?”

  He didn’t brush her off with platitudes. Laura loved him for that. Well, she loved him anyway, but that was one of the reasons why. He thought about it before answering, giving the problem the same consideration he would any other.

  “You’re good for her,” André said eventually. “Jeannette has always preferred Pierre-André. I love her, but I don’t know what to do with her.”

  Laura thought about her own parents, ridiculous and flamboyant as they were. But she had loved them. She had loved them simply for being there. There were certainly things she would have changed about her upbringing, but in the end it had been enough to know that they were there and she was loved.

  “I don’t think you need to do anything in particular,” said Laura. “Just so long as you’re there.”

  André looked at her as though he understood. “It isn’t particularly pleasant to be alone, is it?” he said. He twined his fingers through hers, swinging their joined hands. “We’ll muddle through. Together.”

  Laura squeezed his hand in response. “Yes,” she agreed. “Together.”

  Chapter 35

  The Prefecture of Police was just as intimidating as Colin had claimed.

  When I’d made my plans to visit the Musée de la Préfecture de Police, I had pictured one of those narrow townhouse museums—three stories of exhibits with handwritten cards, flanked by a few mannequins in moth-eaten uniforms. Instead, 1 Rue des Carmes turned out to be a rambling modern structure sunk well below street level and surrounded by police cars and lots of scaffolding.

  Feeling furtive, I slunk through the glass doors, into the beige-walled lobby, which seemed to double as a booking station. There were notices in French all over the walls and some dubious-looking characters waiting on benches.

  I sidled over to the front desk. “Où puis-je trouver le musée, s’il vous plaît? I asked timidly, wishing I had taken something other than eighteenth-century drama and Renaissance lyric poetry for my college French credits. Ronsard was lovely, but he wasn’t much help for coming up with useful phrases like “Hi. I’m not a criminal, I just want to see the archives.”

  The man at the desk took the crimes I was perpetrating on his language in the kindest possible spirit. He smiled tiredly and pointed me towards a sign that said MUSEUM, 3RD FLOOR.

  Oops.

  Eschewing the pint-size elevator, I marched determinedly up the stairs. I had left Colin back in the hotel room, by his choice this time.

  I had woken up feeling strangely hungover. My head ached, my mouth was gummy, and I had that vague sense of foreboding that generally comes of making a fool of oneself in public. Then I had looked next to me, at Colin, sprawled out with one arm under his head, mouth slightly open, eyes scrunched up in sleep, and remembered. The party. Colin’s mother. Selwick Hall. The bridge on the Seine.

  It wasn’t just that we hadn’t discussed it. He hadn’t given me time to discuss it. I would have called it passion if it hadn’t felt so much like postponement.

  But that had been nighttime, with the house lights from the apartments on the Île Saint-Louis twinkling on the Seine, and then, later, in our jewel box of a room, with the birds flying low across the painted mural on the ceiling. It was easier to hide at night, between the shadows and the stars. In the gray, uncaffeinated light of morning, treacherous siblings, overreaching film stars, and vindictive stepfathers/cousins were harder to avoid.

  I bagged the first shower, leaving Colin sleeping. When I came out, wrapped in a towel much smaller than the towels to which I was usually accustomed, he propped himself up on one elbow.

  “Did you want to go to the prefecture today? Since you didn’t yesterday.”

  Ouch. I made a face at him. “It wasn’t entirely a wasted afternoon. One of the artists, Julie Beniet, was the wife of one of the people I was researching. The first wife,” I corrected myself, and then wondered if I shouldn’t have. Second spouses were a touchy topic at the moment. “She even painted a portrait of him.”

  “Planning to put it in the dissertation?”

  That was a low blow. I lobbed one of the sofa pillows at him before retreating into the bathroom to use the exceedingly rickety French blow dryer on my chin-length hair.

  “Why are you suddenly so concerned about my work habits?” I called back over my shoulder, in between the blow dryer breaking down and starting up again. It clearly hadn’t had its caffeine either.

  “I just don’t want you to get angsty about it and blame me,” he said speciously.

  I rooted around in my overnight bag for jeans and a sweater. No need to dress up today, not until tonight—and then only if Colin reconciled with his family. I wiggled into my jeans. “I have most of the information I needed already, via the Silver Orchid’s report to the Pink Carnation.” I’d found that in his collection. “I just need confirmation of it from the French side. The Prefecture archives have the old ledgers from the Ministry of Police and the Paris Prefecture.”

  “You should go, then,�
�� he said. “You’ll be happier if you do.”

  I’d originally planned to spend the day researching, and Colin knew it. But that had been when he’d been scheduled for a cozy lunch with his mother and sister. Somehow, I didn’t think that was going to be happening.

  On the night table, Colin’s cell phone buzzed. We both ignored it.

  I sat down on the bed next to him. “I’m beginning to feel like you’re trying to get rid of me.” He didn’t rise to the bait. “Are you sure? We could do something fun today. Like, um . . . go see where the Bastille used to be?”

  What did one do in France if one wasn’t looking at historic sites? I was at a loss. My idea of fun was tracing the route the tumbril that carried Marie Antoinette had taken from prison to guillotine. I mean, I knew that people did come to Paris to do other things; I just wasn’t quite sure what they were. Shopping? Art galleries? Eating lots of pastries?

  That last did have its appeal. I did like those marzipan pigs.

  Colin levered himself up to press a quick kiss to my lips. “You go research. I’ll find you at the Prefecture in a few hours. We can have dinner together, just us.”

  Funny, just the day before I had been yearning for some just-us time. Now it made me obscurely sad.

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ll give you a call if I finish at the Prefecture early?”

  “Or if they book you,” he said, “I’ll come bail you out.”

  “Don’t laugh,” I warned. “I’m terrified of setting off an alarm or touching the wrong thing.”

  “Just don’t walk off with any of their records.”

  I thought of that as I made my way past the information desk on the third floor—their third floor, our fourth. I’d learned that one the hard way. No, the nice police officers had not been amused when I had almost barged into the administrative offices on what really ought to have been the third floor if they had been counting properly.