The Orchid Affair

by Lauren Willig

  Laura caught herself digging her nails into her palms and made herself stop. The gloves were her only pair; she couldn’t afford to claw out the palms.

  Stupid, Laura told herself. Stupid, stupid, not to have expected this. Stupid to have believed that the Paris to which she returned would be the Paris of her childhood. It had been seventeen years since she had last been in Paris. There had been a little event called a Revolution in between. That was why she was here, after all.

  During her training in Sussex, Laura had memorized the new Revolutionary calendar, with its odd ten-day weeks and renamed months. She had learned which place names had been changed and which had changed back again. But what was a name, more or less? Nothing had prepared her for the scars the city bore; the bloodstains that never quite came out; the damaged buildings; the air of anxiety in the streets, where any man might be an agent of the Minister of Police, any soldier on his way to foment yet another coup, where the blood might run from the Place de la Révolution once again as it had before. The charming, urbane, decadent city of her youth had become anxious and gray.

  Laura gave herself a good shake. Of course it felt gray. It was raining. She wasn’t going to let herself throw away a heaven-sent opportunity all for the sake of a little fall of rain. This was her chance. Her chance to do something more, to be something more, to throw off the yoke of governessing forever, even if the only way to do it was to pretend to be the governess she had once been in truth. She only had to prove to the Pink Carnation that she could spy as well as she could teach.

  Only, Laura mocked herself. As simple as that.

  The door of the salon snapped open, the hinges giving way with a strident squawk that made Laura half trip over the hem of her own dress.

  Through the doorway strode a man in a caped coat. Raindrops sparkled in his close-cropped brown hair and created dark patches on the wool of his coat. The fabric made a brisk swooshing sound as he walked, as if it were hurrying to get out of his way.

  Laura couldn’t blame it. Jaouen walked with the purposeful stride of a man who knew exactly where he was going and woe betide anything that stood in his way.

  His clothes were simple, serviceable, of the sort of fabric that lasted for years and didn’t show dirt. Whatever he was in this game for, it wasn’t for the pecuniary payoff. There was nothing of the dandy about him. His black boots were flecked with fresh mud and old wear. His medium brown hair had been cut short in what might have been an approximation of the Roman style currently in vogue, but which Laura suspected was simply for convenience. Her new employer—her potential employer, she corrected herself—didn’t seem the sort to waste unnecessary time preening in front of a mirror. He looked like what he had been, a lawyer from the provinces, still wearing the clothes he had worn then.

  Laura was standing, as she always stood, in a corner of the room, her drab dress blending neatly into the shadows. She was an adept at that. It was the reason the Pink Carnation had recruited her, her ability to be neither seen nor heard, to be as gray in character as she was in name. But André Jaouen seemed to have no trouble finding her, even in the gloom of the room. Without wasting a moment, he made directly for her.

  “Mademoiselle Griscogne.” It was a statement, not a question.

  He wore spectacles, small ones, rimmed in dark metal. His dossier had not specified that. Perhaps whoever had compiled it hadn’t thought it important. Laura disagreed. The glint of the glass sharpened an already sharp gaze, sizing her up and filleting her into neat pieces all in the space of a moment’s inspection.

  “Monsieur.” Laura forced herself not to flinch away.

  Beneath the twin circles of glass, Jaouen’s eyes were a bright, unexpected aquamarine. In contrast to his drab brown cloak and weather-browned skin, there was something almost frivolous about the color, as if it had been an oversight on the part of nature.

  There was nothing frivolous about the way the Assistant Prefect of Police was looking her up and down.

  There was nothing about her appearance to give her away, Laura reassured herself, fighting to keep the prickles of fear at bay. They had been very careful of that. Her attire was all French-made, from the scuffed half-boots on her feet to the hairpins driving into her scalp. Her real wardrobe, the wardrobe she had worn in her past life as Laura Grey, governess, as well as her small cache of books and personal keepsakes, had been left in Sussex, in a trunk in a box room in a house called Selwick Hall—sixteen years of her life boxed away and reduced to three square feet of storage space. There was no more Laura Grey, governess. Only Laure Griscogne.

  Governess.

  Ah, well.

  Whatever André Jaouen saw passed muster. Well, it should, shouldn’t it? French or English, she looked like the governess she was. “Apologies for keeping you waiting,” he said. “I can only spare you a few moments.”

  As apologies went, it wasn’t much of one. Still, the fact that he had offered one at all was something. Laura inclined her head in acknowledgment. Servility had come hard to her, but she’d had many years in which to learn it. “I am at your convenience, Monsieur Jaouen.”

  “Not mine,” he said, with a sudden, unexpected glint of humor. Or perhaps it was only a trick of the watery light, reflected through rain-streaked windows. “My children’s. The agency told me that you have been a governess for . . . how many years was it?”

  She would have wagered her French-made hairpins that he knew exactly how many, but she supplied the number all the same. “Sixteen.”

  That much was true. Sixteen excruciating years. She had been sixteen herself when she began, stranded and friendless in a foreign country. She had lied with all the efficiency of desperation, convincing the woman at the agency that she was twenty. She had scraped back her hair to make herself look older and ruthlessly scowled down anyone who dared to question it. Mostly, they hadn’t. Hunger and worry did their work quickly. By the end of that first, desperate month, she could easily have passed for older than she claimed. Her upbringing might have been unconventional, but it had left her unprepared for the shock of true poverty.

  “Sixteen years,” her prospective employer repeated. Through the spectacles, he submitted her to the sort of scrutiny he must have given dodgy witnesses in the courtroom, as though he could fright out lies by the force of his look alone. “Think again, Mademoiselle Griscogne.”

  Laura pinched her lips together. Sixteen years ago, she had learned that the expression made her look older, more reliable. People expected their governess to look like a prune who had just been sucking on a lemon.

  By now it came naturally.

  She had to succeed in this mission. Had to, had to. Anything rather than face being a governess forever, feeling her face freeze a little more every year into a caricature of herself until there was no Laura left beneath it.

  For the next few months, she would be the very best governess she could be, if only it meant—please God—that she never had to be a governess again.

  Laura squared her shoulders beneath her sodden pelisse, steeling herself against the urge to shiver. “I assure you, Monsieur Jaouen,” she said frostily, “my experience as a governess is quite as extensive as the agency has claimed. I provide elementary instruction in composition, literature, Scripture, history, geography, botany, and arithmetic. I am proficient in Italian, German, English, and the classical languages. I teach music, drawing, and needlework.”

  André Jaouen’s eyebrows lifted. “All that in the same day?”

  Laura’s brows drew together. Was he joking? It was hard to tell. Either way, it was always better to ignore such lapses in one’s employers. If they weren’t joking, they tended to take offense at the assumption of levity. If they were, it was dangerous to encourage them.

  The reflection helped settle her nervous stomach. She felt on firmer ground here, putting a prospective employer in his place. She had played this game before.

  “I tailor the curriculum to fit the specific needs and interests of the child
ren in my care,” she said loftily. “Not all subjects are appropriate in every situation.”

  André Jaouen made an impatient gesture. “No, of course not. I doubt my son would appreciate your tutelage on needlework. You are free to start immediately?” At her look of surprise, he said briskly, “I wish to have this business dealt with as quickly as possible. Your references were excellent.”

  Of course they had been. The Pink Carnation employed only the best forgers.

  Was it just her nerves acting up again, or had that been too easy? Shouldn’t he question her about her references? Ask her more about her teaching methods? Tell her about the children?

  “Mademoiselle Griscogne?”

  “Yes,” she said hastily. “I can begin whenever you like.”

  André Jaouen motioned her forward, already in motion himself, making short work of the distance to the double doors through which Laura had entered. “I have two children, Gabrielle and Pierre-André. Gabrielle is nine. Pierre-André is almost five. Until now, they have been with their grandparents in Nantes. This is their first time in Paris.” He spoke as he walked: direct, economical, no effort wasted.

  “And their prior education?” Laura lengthened her stride to keep up, her wet skirts tangling in her legs as she followed him past a wide staircase, the marble balustrade gone a dull gray with grime. An empty pedestal stood on the landing, marking the place where a statue must once have stood. Tapestries still lined the walls, but they hung crookedly, and several bore poorly mended gashes.

  “Their grandfather taught them at home.”

  Laura did her best to suppress a grimace. Fairy stories. Basic reading. Arithmetic. If she were lucky. She would have to start from the very beginning with them. The boy, Pierre-André, was nearly of an age to be sent off to school. She would have to bring him up to the level of other boys his age.

  No, she wouldn’t. The thought brought Laura up short. If she did her job well, she wouldn’t be around long enough for it to matter. She had been thinking like a governess again, falling back into the old patterns.

  Jaouen was still talking, words marshalling themselves into neat, economical sentences. Behind the measured cadences, Laura could detect just a hint of a Breton burr. There was no faux-aristocratic ostentation there, no pretense. “Your wages will be paid quarterly. Room and board will be provided to you. Ah, Jean.” That last had been directed to the gatekeeper. “Tell Jeannette to find Mademoiselle Griscogne a room. Something near the children.”

  Jean and Jeannette? His servants couldn’t be named Jean and Jeannette. It was too much like something out of the Commedia dell’Arte. Did the still-unseen Jeannette run around in a parti-colored costume smacking Jean over the head with a big stick, like Pierrot and Pierrette? Perhaps they were spies too. If so, one would have thought they could have come up with better aliases.

  “Jeannette is the nursery maid,” Jaouen said as an aside to her. Without waiting for them to be handed to him, he scooped up his own hat and cane off a marble-topped table by the door. “Jeannette will see you settled and make you known to Gabrielle and Pierre-André. If you need anything, either Jean or Jeannette will see to it.”

  With a nonchalant push, Jean the gatekeeper shoved open the door, letting in a blast of damp air. The rain looked as though it were contemplating turning to snow. The icy pellets stung Laura’s cheeks as she followed Jaouen to the door. She was still wearing her pelisse, and her pelisse was still just as wet as it had been when she had entered; the entire interview, such as it was, had taken all of ten minutes. Ten minutes to embark on the most dangerous gamble of her life.

  A carriage was waiting in the courtyard, plain and black like the cloak draped over Jaouen’s shoulders, the horses pawing impatiently at the cobbles.

  She had clearly been dismissed. And hired. She had been hired, hadn’t she?

  Jean the gatekeeper gave her a disapproving look as she followed her new employer out under the porte cochere. Or perhaps that was just his normal expression. “I will need to fetch my things,” Laura said desperately. “And settle my account at my current lodgings.”

  Reaching into his waistcoat pocket, André Jaouen took out a purse and shook several coins out into his palm. He thrust what looked to her untutored eyes like a substantial sum in her direction.

  “An advance,” he said impatiently, when Laura looked at him uncomprehending. “On your wages.”

  Laura’s back stiffened. “My own funds are more than adequate to settle my current obligations.”

  He looked at her curiously, then shrugged, returning the coins to his pocket. “Will you bite my head off if I offer you the use of the carriage?”

  He cocked an eyebrow, waiting for her reply. There it was again, that glimmer of what might be humor.

  “There is no need, sir,” Laura said coolly. “My lodgings are not far and I am more than accustomed to managing for myself.”

  Jaouen eyed her speculatively, his glasses glinting in the light of the carriage lamps. “I can see that.” And then he ruined it by adding, “I wouldn’t hire you if I thought it were otherwise. My occupation is a demanding one. I have no time for domestic squabbles.”

  That had put her in her place. Between fear and relief, she felt almost giddy. “Squelching squabbles is one of my particular specialties.”

  Jaouen forbore to comment. With the air of someone getting done with a bad job, he continued, “You may be troubled from time to time by my wife’s cousin, who persists under the unfortunate delusion that my home is his own. Ignore him.”

  Ah, one of those, was he? Once, she might have claimed that she wasn’t the sort of governess to inflame a young man’s lusts. But she had learned the hard way that, after a certain degree of inebriation, all it took was being female, and sometimes not even that. She had also learned that employers seldom took kindly to their elder sons, nephews, or houseguests being hit over the head with a warming pan, candlestick, or chamber pot. Laura appreciated both the warning and the implicit authorization to do whatever she needed to do.

  It was comforting to know that the intimidating M. Jaouen had an Achilles’ heel, even if that Achilles’ heel was only a cousin by marriage. It made him more human, somehow. And human meant fallible. Fallible was good, especially for her purposes.

  “I will. Sir.”

  Jaouen nodded brusquely, her message received and accepted. Hat in one hand, cane in the other, he started for the carriage. At the last moment, just beyond the protective cover of the awning, Jaouen jerked his head back over his shoulder. Laura shot to attention.

  “Why did you leave your last position?” he asked abruptly.

  “My pupil married.” If he had hoped to shock her into an admission, he would be disappointed. Her pupil had married in June, leaving her once more without a situation. The family had been kind; they had kept her on through the wedding, but there was a limit to the charity she was willing to accept. “She had no need for a governess anymore.”

  But the Pink Carnation had had need of an agent.

  Rain pocked Jaouen’s glasses as he treated her to another long, thoughtful look. He held his hat in one hand but didn’t bother to put it on, despite the rivulets of rain that silvered his hair and dampened his coat. “An occupational hazard?”

  Laura permitted herself a grim smile. “One of the most hazardous.”

  She had never thought much of matrimony herself—her parents had set no favorable example—but it had been distinctly unsettling to make a place for oneself only to be flung out into the world again. And again and again. Some of them, the sentimental ones, sent letters for a time, but those generally tailed off within the first year, as the daily demands of the domestic state outweighed sentimental recollections of the schoolroom.

  “You shan’t have to worry about that with Gabrielle. Yet.”

  She wouldn’t be around long enough to worry about that.

  “Indeed,” she agreed. Noncommittal replies were always best in dealing with employers. Yes, sir; no
, sir; indeed, sir. It came out by rote.

  Jaouen clapped his hat onto his head. “Tomorrow morning,” he said. “The children will be expecting you.”

  Jean the gatekeeper slammed the door shut behind Jaouen as he swung up into the carriage. The horses’ nostrils flared, their breath steaming in the cold air as the coachman clucked to them, setting them into motion. Through the rapidly misting glass of the window, Jaouen was nothing more than a silhouette, a blurred image in tans and browns.

  That was it. She had done it. She had really done it. Blood surged to Laura’s cheeks and fingertips, sending a rush of warmth tingling through her despite the freezing wind gluing her soaking skirts to her legs. Whatever else came of it, the first step was accomplished; she was a member of Jaouen’s household. She was in.

  Between the rain and the sound of hooves against the cobbles, Laura could just barely hear her new employer call out his instructions to the coachman.

  “To the Abbaye Prison. As fast as you can.”

  Laura swallowed hard, turning her face away from a sudden gust of wind that tore at her bonnet strings and snatched away the very breath from her throat.

  Oh, she was in all right. Way over her head.

  Chapter 2

  The carriage rocked abruptly forward and then back as it came to a stop in front of the Prison de l’Abbaye. The stone bulk of the Abbaye squatted sullenly in front of the carriage, the towers set in each side jutting out like a pair of angry elbows. Torches illuminated the entrance, burning greasily against the early dark of a wet winter night.

  “So kind of you to finally join us.” A small man in unrelieved black stepped out from under the lee of the portal at the entrance of the Abbaye Prison.

  “Us?” André said mildly, taking his time climbing down from the carriage. He’d be damned if he’d hurry for the likes of Gaston Delaroche. “I had no idea this was to be an ensemble event.”

  Delaroche positioned himself so that the guttering torches on either side of the entrance cast an eerie glow over the polished silver of his coat buttons, bathing him in an unnatural and unholy light.