The Orchid Affair

by Lauren Willig

“Gently, now,” she warned. “You don’t want to go flying.”

  Pierre-André was favorably struck by the idea. “Don’t I?”

  “Not like that,” said Gabrielle, daring Laura to contradict her. “She just meant falling. People can’t fly.”

  Pierre-André’s lower lip stuck out. “Butterflies can fly.”

  Gabrielle assumed all the superiority of her nine long years. “Butterflies have wings,” she informed her brother.

  Pierre-André’s face set in an expression of pure stubbornness. “Then I’ll have wings too,” he announced. He tugged at Laura’s hand. “Can I have wings? Can I?”

  Gabrielle started to exchange a “boys!” look with Laura. Recalling that Laura was the enemy, she abruptly pulled her chin back into her collar.

  “Come close by me,” Laura said, pulling the little boy to her side as they started across the river. Below, the boatmen plied their trade, ferrying passengers along the Seine. The narrow crafts looked like water bugs as they darted along between the banks of the river. “Or you’ll need fins instead of wings.”

  “I don’t want fins.”

  “You will if you fall in the Seine.” When Pierre-André looked intrigued, she added hastily, “I wouldn’t advise it. That water is icy cold.”

  “How cold?”

  “Too cold for a butterfly to survive—or a little boy.” She reached a protective hand out to Gabrielle as a wagon trundled past them, but Gabrielle jerked away. She hunched her shoulders up beneath her coat and walked faster, doing everything she could to distance herself from the new governess and her brother. To their right, the buttresses of Notre-Dame soared in a feat of medieval engineering, commanding the skyline, while beyond it, one could just make out the long façade of the Louvre palace. In the sunshine, they glowed golden, the windows sparkling like diamonds. Laura saw Gabrielle’s eyes widen at the sight, then carefully drop to her feet, determined not to show she was impressed.

  Laura let Gabrielle have her little act of defiance. It was dreadful to be nine. It wasn’t an age one would want to live over: too old to be cooed over, too young to be treated as an equal, stuck betwixt and between, and happy with no one.

  Laura and Pierre-André followed behind Gabrielle, responding to the little boy’s chatter by rote as he kept up a running commentary on the boats, the sky, the other inhabitants of the bridge, and what it might be like to be a butterfly with fins.

  “There are butterfly fish,” said Laura absently. “But I believe they live in the tropics, not here. We can find you a book with pictures of them when we get to the bookseller.”

  Gabrielle twisted around. “There are booksellers,” she said, pointing at the stalls by the side of the river. “Why can’t we buy books there?”

  “Those aren’t the right kind of books,” replied Laura imperturbably. “We’re going to a proper shop.”

  The Rue Serpente, they had told her. What could be more innocent than a trip to the bookshop? Governesses taught. Teaching required books. Even a nasty, suspicious, French Ministry of Police-trained mind couldn’t find any fault with that.

  Laura summoned Gabrielle closer as they crossed over into the Left Bank, home of students and stews. There was a sour reek of spilled wine about the streets as they set off down a winding alley towards the Rue Serpente, but the bookshop itself looked respectable enough, with narrow, dark windows piled high with books. Despite herself, Gabrielle’s eyes brightened at the display.

  Ha! thought Laura. Got you.

  A little bell tinkled as Laura pushed open the door. The shop gave the impression of being even smaller and more cluttered than it actually was, with books piled on tables and racks and stacked in uneven towers propped against the walls. A small coal brazier burned in one corner of the shop, puffing out smoke and warmth. In summer, the windows would be open to the street, with books spilling out onto tables outside, but now the windows were shuttered tight against the January chill, making the room feel like a bibliophilic Ali Baba’s cave, dark and crowded with treasure.

  The smell of leather, binding glue, paper, and coal dust brought back powerful memories of other bookshops. Laura paused just inside the threshold, giving her eyes time to adjust to the dim interior. There had been one place her parents had patronized, a little shop on the Left Bank, with a leathery, smoky smell just such as this, where the proprietor kept coffee in the back for his favorite guests. There would be impromptu recitations and loud political arguments and above it all the smell of leather and book glue and her mother’s musk perfume.

  “Owwww!” protested Gabrielle. “You poked me!”

  “Did not!” Pierre-André was the picture of outraged innocence. Until he poked her again.

  Laura came hurtling back from 1784. She wasn’t twelve years old anymore, trailing along in the wake of her parents from bookshop to atelier. She was a thirty-two-year-old governess and the proprietor was giving her the sort of look reserved for people who bring dangerous livestock onto the premises.

  “Gentlemen,” she said severely, relocating Pierre-André to her other side, “do not poke their sisters.”

  Pierre-André pouted. “But—”

  “People who poke are little better than savages, and savages Do Not Get Books. Am I understood? Come on,” Laura said, taking Pierre-André by the hand. “Let’s see what we can find for you. Maybe the proprietor will have something to recommend.”

  “Look! Look!” Pierre-André tugged, yanking her towards a book propped open on a stand. A black-and-white illustration portrayed an enraged Hercules whopping away at the heads of the hydra. The hydra looked justifiably alarmed.

  Behind them, cold air gusted into the shop as the door opened, admitting another customer.

  “If you behave, you can have it,” Laura bribed him shamelessly, propelling him towards the counter and the clerk, determined to get there first, before the new customer could beat her out.

  Pierre-André seized his advantage. “Can I have sweets, too?”

  The newcomer wafted his way down the narrow aisle, his head tilted at an angle that implied that he was in the process of listening to divine voices that sang only to him. He came down to earth long enough to wave a languid hand at Pierre-André. “This shop purveys celestial sweets, dear boy. The sweets of . . . learning!”

  He was garbed with that deliberate air of dishabille that proclaims the artist the world over. Despite the cold, he wore no jacket, only a waistcoat over his flowing white shirt, and a rough cravat knotted at the neck.

  Pierre-André was looking perturbed again. “Are those like candied almonds?”

  The poet—he could only be a poet—pressed two fine-boned hands to his chest. “Better than almonds, my lively lad. In these Elysian fields one can sup on the sugared nuggets of choicest poesy.”

  All but concealed behind a display of books, Gabrielle rolled her eyes. Laura heartily concurred.

  Pierre-André ignored Elysian fields and went straight to the important bit. “I want nuggets of posy,” he demanded. “Sugary ones.”

  Laura wanted a cup of tea. Brewed black, milk, no sugar.

  “In a minute,” she said, but it was already too late. The poet had ranged himself in front of the counter. He had, she realized indignantly, cut her out. She tried tapping her foot, but the poet was oblivious.

  He was more likely smoking the sugary fields of Elysium than supping on them, thought Laura bitterly. The Left Bank hadn’t changed much since her parents’ day.

  “What have you today for me”—the man paused dramatically, swishing his sleeves for emphasis—“in terms of poetree?”

  Laura contemplated a swift kick to the knee. Preferably times three.

  The shopkeeper reached beneath the counter and drew out a slim book bound in cheap paper covers. “You might want to try this, Monsieur Whittlesby. It’s the latest from Porcelier.”

  “That rubbish!” An exuberant gesture sent a full yard of white linen sleeve swooping over Pierre-André’s head. Pierre-André ducked
and giggled. “The man has no feeling for the rhythm of the language, for the tripping trot of enjambed feet as they prance down that pulchritudinous path of poesy over which only the muse may rule as mistress.” The speech was made all the more impressive by the fact that the poet managed to utter it without once pausing for breath.

  The shopkeeper eyed him dispassionately. “Shall I put it on your account as always, Monsieur Whittlesby?”

  The poet tucked the book up beneath one flowing sleeve, where it disappeared among the folds. “Yes, do.”

  Laura waited impatiently for the poet to step away from the counter, as the shopkeeper embarked upon the seemingly endless process of recording the transaction in a dog-eared ledger. Muttering to himself in rhyme, the poet wandered to the side, his nose buried in the despised poems of Porcelier. Laura could hear the occasional “Ha!” emerge from between the red morocco covers.

  Laura tugged Pierre-André out from under one of the poet’s sleeves, with which he was amusing himself by playing a private game of hide and seek among the excess fabric.

  “May I have my posy now?” he demanded.

  Laura put a hand on his head to quiet him. “Do you have any books appropriate for a child of five?” she asked the shopkeeper.

  With Pierre-André beside her, the question sounded entirely natural, not at all like a set piece she had been instructed to recite.

  Clicking his tongue against his teeth, the clerk rummaged about in an untidy pile of books. It was, thought Laura, an excellent performance. If it was a performance, that was. What if this wasn’t the right clerk?

  Well, then, Laura told herself, keeping a grip on a squirming Pierre-André, the worst that would happen would be that they would have bought a book appropriate for a five-year-old.

  The shopkeeper held up a book, squinted at it, clicked his tongue a few times more, and returned it to the pile, repeating this process before emerging triumphant with a large, ornately bound volume.

  “You might want to try this,” he suggested.

  No, no, no. Laura wanted to stamp in impatience. That wasn’t the right phrase. If he were her contact, he was supposed to say, “I usually recommend this for a child of seven,” or eight or nine, with the number representing the page on which she would find the key word that would then be used to decode the message.

  “Oh?” said Laura. “What is it?”

  Whatever it was, she hoped Pierre-André liked it, because it obviously wasn’t going to serve any other purpose.

  Placing the book flat on the counter, the shopkeeper spread it open to reveal a delicately tinted engraving of a flower.

  It was an orchid.

  Chapter 4

  It wasn’t silver. There was no such thing as a silver orchid. But it didn’t need to be. Laura knew exactly what it meant.

  A thrill of excitement buzzed through her, heady as the champagne she dimly remembered drinking back in her pre-governess days.

  “It’s perfect,” she said, and meant it. There would be no need for a page indication this time. She knew what her key word would be. “Silver.” In one fell swoop, the Carnation’s contact had confirmed his status and given her the code for the next message. “Natural history, is it?”

  “Many young gentlemen these days are taking up botanical pursuits,” said the shopkeeper blandly.

  “Young ladies, too,” Laura said, feeling positively arch.

  “So I have been told,” said the shopkeeper, with something that wasn’t quite a smile. “Some may find it unconventional, but I hear that they take to it quite well.”

  Laura felt an unaccustomed urge to grin. It was all she could do not to grab the shopkeeper by the hand and shake it, babbling, haven’t we done well? Aren’t we clever?

  Instead, she nodded crisply, tapping a gloved finger against the open page of the book. “It will be good drawing practice for my pupils. We’ll take it.”

  Without betraying any emotion, the shopkeeper closed the cover, concealing the orchid beneath a nondescript façade of blue leather. “Will there be anything more?”

  “I will also need an introductory Latin text,” said Laura. That wasn’t part of the code, but, while she was teaching, she might as well teach. It would be hard to explain her continued presence in Jaouen’s household otherwise. “Do you have the Orbis Sensualium Pictus?”

  “The—?” The shopkeeper paused to allow her to fill in the title.

  It was a book she had often used to teach Latin before, especially to younger children. Brightly colored pictures were paired with the corresponding Latin and English translation.

  “The Orbis Sensual—” Laura ground to a halt as she realized her blunder.

  The second language after the Latin in the Orbis Sensualium wasn’t French. It was English.

  She had used the Orbis Sensualium Pictus to teach English children in England. How could that not have occurred to her? That was certainly one way to get herself caught in a hurry; go about asking for English books in a French bookshop. She might as well emblazon “SPY” on her forehead. In capital letters. In English. With a Latin translation underneath.

  Or she could just bang her head against the counter and wish she had never got out of bed that morning.

  Laura glanced guiltily over her shoulder, but the only other person in the shop was the poet, who was, mercifully, too absorbed in poetic reflection to pay any attention to her faux pas.

  “Never mind,” she muttered, and affected a cough to cover her confusion. She would have to be wary of slips like that. After sixteen years, she had become far more English than she had realized. So much for doing so well. Pride goeth, and all those other gloomy adages. She would have to be more careful in the future. “Er, do you have any picture books with Latin translations for children?”

  Why hadn’t she just asked that in the first place? That was what she got for trying to show off.

  “I can see about finding something like that for you,” the bookseller offered dubiously, “But it might take some time. We did have a copy of Aesop’s Fables in a Latin translation. I could have that for you next week.”

  “Do you think it would be appropriate for a child of nine?”

  “It very well could be,” agreed the shopkeeper. His slow nod of approval made Laura feel marginally less like an idiot. Whatever message the Carnation next wanted to convey would be found on page nine of Aesop’s Fables, corresponding to the code word “silver.”

  “That would be very good of you,” said Laura, just as the door opened again with a tinkle of chimes and a blast of cold air.

  Three women breezed into the store. Two were obviously ladies of fashion; the third, older by several years, was dressed with puritanical severity except for the truly alarming purple plumes that sprouted from her bonnet like a molting tropical bird. Laura sincerely doubted that any bird, even in the tropics, had ever dared to show itself among the avian haut monde in plumage of that shade.

  Laura saw Gabrielle taking in the details of the ladies’ costumes with hungry eyes. With a twinge, Laura remembered what it was to be nine and plain, with that horrible awareness that one didn’t, somehow, look quite right. The child’s clothes were sturdy and well made, but they could not, under any circumstances, be termed anything other than provincial. Laura’s problem hadn’t been quite the same—she had, if anything, always been dressed in far too mature a style for her age—but she could well remember that anxious desire to look just like everyone else, and the squirming humiliation of knowing she didn’t.

  She would have to speak to Jaouen about a new dress for his daughter. If books wouldn’t win Gabrielle over, perhaps pretty clothing might. And it would give her an excellent excuse to seek out her employer.

  The poet’s sleeves expanded to hitherto unimaginable width as he flung his arms high in the air. Gabrielle hastily retreated back against a stack of books.

  “My muse!” he cried, gesturing grandly at one of the ladies, who was magnificently turned out in a tight-sleeved, high-wai
sted sky blue pelisse finished in fur trim. She wore a bonnet with a silk-lined brim that shadowed her face, although not enough to curtain her from the eyes of her admirer. “Well met by midday, fair Miss Wooliston!”

  Laura had to juggle to keep her grip on her book. Fortunately, no one was looking at her. All attention was on the lady in sky blue, the poet’s muse.

  Or, as Laura knew her, the Pink Carnation.

  Laura felt a tug on her arm. “What’s a muse?” demanded Pierre-André, in a whisper like a foghorn.

  “Ah, the muse!” mused the poet, striking a pose like Jove about to throw thunderbolt. “The muse, my dear poppet, is a thing of glory, a flame of fire, a blazing comet of divine inspiration! In short—she!” He wafted his sleeve in the direction of the Pink Carnation.

  The pretty lady didn’t appear to be on fire, but Pierre-André prudently backed up against Laura’s side in case she should blaze into divine inspiration and catch them all up in the conflagration.

  Undaunted, the poet was courting artistic immolation. “I have just, this very morning, finished my latest ode to your sublime, um—”

  “Sublimity?” suggested the Pink Carnation.

  Gabrielle’s eyes were like saucers and Pierre-André was tugging at Laura’s arm again, hissing, “What’s sublimmy? And can I have a shirt like that? Can I? Can I?”

  Turning back to the shopkeeper, Laura said hastily, “The Greek myths in the front. We would also like a copy of that. If you are a good boy,” she added to Pierre-André, “I’ll read you about Hercules and the snakes later. You’ll like the snakes.”

  With a nod, the shopkeeper set off to the front to fetch the book.

  Behind her, the poet was in full spate, fluttering his sleeves at Miss Wooliston in a bizarre sort of mating ritual. “Sublimity is too limiting a term to encompass the range of my regard for so rarefied a creature as thou. Which is why, instead of one word, I offer you five cantos.”

  From somewhere in the vicinity of his left sleeve, the poet made good his word by producing a very thick roll of paper, beautifully tied with a pink silk ribbon.