The Orchid Affair Read online

  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 against 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.

  Jaouen held on to it. “Buying volumes for the children on your half day, Mademoiselle Griscogne? I should have thought you would have been set on frivolity.”

  “Oh, certainly. I might dip deep into dissipation with a walk around the park, or even a daring visit to a public concert.” Laura made one last attempt to wrench the brim of her bonnet into place. It stubbornly refused to bend. “Since I cannot take the children with me to the bookshop, I must go without them. On my half day.”

  “Touché.” Jaouen tipped his hat to her. “A hit.”

  Jostled by someone in the crowd, Laura did a little half-step to avoid stumbling into him again. “I would never think of sparring with my employer. It would be decidedly improper.”

  Jaouen raised an eyebrow at her. It was amazing how much sarcasm could be packed into one little arc of hair. “If this is your way of being peaceable, I would hate for us to be at war.”

  Little did he know. “Would I bite the hand that feeds me?”

  “My guess? Yes.” Something in the way he said it made Laura’s cheeks heat. Jaouen cleared his throat, dropping his eyes to the book in his hands. “What’s this, then? What tales are you telling my children?”

  Laura resisted the urge to snatch it from his hands as her employer flipped at random through the pages. Each page contained a crude woodcut illustration, with verses in Latin and French beneath.

  “These look familiar,” said Jaouen, pausing at the image of a wolf flipping his tail at a cluster of grapes dangling tantalizingly just out of reach. “Aesop’s Fables?”

  “It makes an easier introduction to Latin than Caesar’s Wars. The children learn faster when presented with something familiar.”

  Jaouen flipped another page. “I wish my Latin master had been half so accommodating.”

  Laura craned to see over the edge of the book. It was a crow this time, peering into the water. The Carnation wouldn’t have left anything incriminating between the pages. She hoped. “The nature of the subject matter does not render the instruction any less rigorous, I assure you.”

  “I would never suspect you of being anything less than rigorous. I shouldn’t want you to call me out for questioning your pedagogy.”

  “Are you afraid I would challenge you to Latin verses at ten paces?”

  “It’s the sums at dawn to which I object.”

  There was something oddly intimate about the image. Dawn. Disordered hair and tousled sheets, warm skin and dented pillows.

  Laura pulled herself together. She was a governess, for heaven’s sake. She wasn’t supposed to think of such things. “The fables do provide excellent moral lessons.”

  Jaouen’s fingers moved busily through the pages. “Do they? Here’s one for you.” Looking at the Latin below, Jaouen read aloud, “‘Multi sub vestimentis ovium lupina faciunt opera.’”

  He read it as easily as he read French. Whoever had taught him classics had taught him well. Laura thought she knew now to whom the Seneca, Virgil, and Plutarch had belonged.

  Peering over his shoulder, Laura saw a woodcut of a wolf with a sheep’s fleece draped half over his lupine shoulders. The wolf looked decidedly shifty.

  “‘Many do the work of wolves beneath the clothing of sheep,’” Laura translated for him.

  Jaouen closed the book, none too gently. “A useful lesson. Especially here in Paris.”

  Laura accepted the book as he held it out to her. “Why Paris especially?” she asked. “Surely, no one city has the monopoly on deception.”

  “Have you traveled so widely, Mademoiselle Griscogne?”

  “I have served in a great number of households,” she said circumspectly. That much was true.

  From down the thoroughfare, a rich voice bellowed, “Jaouen!”

  Pedestrians gave way as a man approached, a massive figure in a coat of such garish crimson and gold that it hurt the eyes to look at it. His waistcoat, protruding below, was patterned in wide blue and white stripes, adorned with broad bronze buttons that served barely to contain his immense girth. A shock of silver hair framed his face like a lion’s mane, sticking out from under the high-crowned hat jammed down on his head. He swung a bronze-tipped walking stick in greeting as he came towards them, deploying it like a bandleader’s baton.

  No. Oh no, no, no.

  It couldn’t be. The last time Laura had seen him, he had been slimmer. Not slim—he had never been slim—but he had been tall enough to carry the layer of fat well. His hair had still been its natural brown, streaked with the odd bit of gray, and usually held back by a bit of ribbon or string or whatever else he had happened to find in his studio. Even then, though, he had possessed a taste for garish colors, for waistcoats in all the shades he would never stoop to place on his palette.

  Laura’s mother used to laughingly accuse him of venting all his gaudiness on his person and reserving none for his paintings, which were meticulously detailed and rigorously controlled, in a palette that ranged from beige to brown. “With the odd bit of blue,” he would say, and L
aura’s mother would smile and touch his cheek with the back of his hand. “Caro, caro,” she would say with a sigh, and Daubier would laugh his deep belly laugh while Laura’s father propped his feet up on a stool, wine balanced on his flat stomach, lost in his own contemplations.

  Sunlight flashed off the knob of his cane. Laura blinked, forcing her dazzled brain to clear. There was no point in denial or escape, he was ten paces away, five, moving fast. Painter, bon vivant, loving friend. He had given her piggyback rides, her hands tangled in his hair, dipping her to make her squeal.

  He didn’t see her at first. His goal was Jaouen. And why, thought Laura, with an ache she hadn’t expected to feel, would he notice the drab thing in gray standing at Jaouen’s side? Unlike Daubier, there was nothing to link her to the thing she once had been. She had changed out of all recognition.

  Antoine Daubier fell on Laura’s employer with an embrace as exuberant as his clothing, dealing Jaouen a smacking kiss on either cheek.

  Jaouen untangled himself without injury. Daubier’s welcomes, Laura remembered, took some getting used to. A lesser man might be smothered.

  “You would think it had been weeks, instead of only last Sunday,” Jaouen said dryly. “Are you that eager for our rematch?”

  Daubier threw his arms wide. “Forgive me, my friend, for my tardiness! It wasn’t trepidation that stayed my steps, but circumstance. I was waylaid by an unexpected guest. As, I see, were you,” Daubier added, making a quick about-face as he noticed Laura. His waistcoat made ominous creaking noises as he swept a bow, forcing his tummy into directions it had not been designed by nature to go. “My dear Madame. I beg your pardon. I had not seen you.”

  Which was just the way Laura had wanted it.

  “Sir.” Laura bent her knees in a hint of a curtsy, head angled down.

  Leaning to one side, Daubier peered shamelessly beneath her bonnet brim. “Do I know you? You look familiar.”

  Laura backed away. “I don’t think—”

  Jaouen stepped forward, settling the issue with his accustomed efficiency. “Let’s not waste time on guessing games. Daubier, this is my children’s governess, Mademoiselle Griscogne.”

  “Griscogne?” The old man’s eyes lit.

  What had made her think it would be a good idea taking her own old name? Because she hadn’t thought she would meet anyone who knew her. They were supposed to be dead, gone, scattered.

  Daubier rose up on the balls of his feet, like a griffon rearing on someone’s escutcheon, crimson and gold against a field azure. “Did you say ‘Griscogne’? Good God, it’s been years since I heard that name!”

  He stared shamelessly at Laura, with the license afforded by both his age and his profession. He took in her severely cut dress and her crooked bonnet, her sensible pelisse and her tightly drawn hair.

  Laura felt an ache at the back of her throat as his expression of pleasure turned to one of puzzlement.

  Incredulously, as if hoping it weren’t the case, he exclaimed, “Not Michel de Griscogne’s girl?”

  Chapter 10

  Who was Michel de Griscogne?

  André saw Mlle. Griscogne press her eyes shut, then open them again. Looking resigned, she held out a hand. “Yes,” she said simply. “How do you do, Monsieur Daubier? It has been rather a long time.”

  Daubier shook his head, his jowls wobbling. “Good Lord. Michel de Griscogne’s little girl. I would never have thought . . .” Reaching out, he grasped her hand in his. It was the hand holding the book, but that didn’t daunt him. He wrung the book with her hand. “Good Lord.”

  “You know each other?” André looked from his chess partner to the governess. From the expression on her face, the Lord had very little to do with it.

  Daubier squeezed the governess’s hand until André could practically hear the bones crunch. He sandwiched her hand and book between both of his, holding fast as though he feared she might run away. “Know each other? I’ve known your governess since she was in swaddling clothes!”

  “Maybe not quite in swaddling clothes,” Mlle. Griscogne hedged, looking embarrassed.

  Daubier’s buttons rumbled with laughter. “Ha! I even did the swaddling myself a time or two.” Turning to André, Daubier explained joyously, “Mademoiselle de Griscogne’s parents were among my dearest friends.”

  Mlle. Griscogne—Mlle. de Griscogne?—dipped her head in acknowledgment. “They had a gift for making themselves loved.”

  Was it only André who caught the edge to her comment? He looked at her sharply, but her face was turned away.

  Daubier nodded heartily in agreement. “All of Paris mourned when the news came to us about your parents. Such a loss, such a loss.”

  “It was a very long time ago,” Mlle. Griscogne said, making an effort to extract her hand.

  “Too true, too true! Ah, those were the days. I didn’t have this back then.” Daubier dealt a resounding slap to his overflowing waistcoat. “And your mother . . . Your beautiful mother.” Daubier shook his head hopelessly. “She was so full of life. So full of joy. To imagine her, dead and cold . . .”

  “Daubier—,” André cut in.

  The artist ignored him. “I wept like a baby when I heard the news. They were missed, my dear, much missed.”

  “Thank you,” said Mlle. Griscogne. “I really should be—”

  Once started, there was no stopping Daubier. “Good God,” he repeated. “Michel’s little girl, all grown up. Who would have thought it?”

  “It is the usual consequence of the passage of years,” said Mlle. Griscogne.

  Daubier snorted. “Say that again when you’ve become as old as I have. I still have the portrait I painted of you as a girl.”

  For a moment she looked confused. Then a small gleam of recognition kindled in her eyes, spreading across her face, clearing the lines from her forehead, lifting the corners of her mouth in an echo of a smile.

  “You painted me with a bird,” she said, looking up at Daubier for confirmation. “A yellow one.”

  “A finch,” supplied Daubier, enjoying himself hugely. His own compositions were his favorite topic.

  “I remember now.” Mlle. Griscogne cocked her head. As she looked up at the old artist, she looked softer, vulnerable. “He pecked me.”

  The old man’s fleshy face creased into a smile. “And worse.”

  “And on my favorite dress, too,” said the woman who had once been the girl with the finch.

  “I painted it out,” Daubier reassured her. “Before I exhibited you at the Royal Academy.”

  “Thank you,” said Mlle. Griscogne seriously. “I should have hated to appear in public in a stained dress.”

  André felt left out. “I feel as though I’m missing something.”

  Daubier sighed heavily. “Twenty years, my boy, twenty years.” Eyes narrowing, he squinted at André’s governess. “No. More than that. How old were you when I painted you?”

  A wrinkle creased Mlle. Griscogne’s brow. “Nine, maybe? Ten?”

  André tried to picture the woman in front of him at ten—a good foot shorter, hair in curls, features still unformed. It was a disorienting exercise. Governesses weren’t meant to have had childhoods, or to be painted with finches. They popped into the world full-grown with a ruler in one hand and a primer in the other. “You would have been about Gabrielle’s age.”

  “Yes,” she agreed. “Just about. A long time ago, in any event.”

  She would have taken a step back, but Daubier took her chin in his hand, squinting at her this way and that. “You always did have such paintable features.”

  “You mean I was there to paint.” She looked to André with a rueful smile, the sort of smile he wouldn’t have imagined could have existed on that controlled countenance. It was like being introduced to an entirely different person from the woman who had been dwelling under his roof for the past fortnight. Her face looked rounder, softer. “A spare child was nothing more but fodder for the artist’s easel.”

&nbs
p; André knew what that was like. Julie had never seen any reason why Gabrielle shouldn’t be plucked from her cradle, asleep or awake, to serve as a model when the inspiration moved her. An infant in the house was just another prop, and a far more interesting one than three apples, two oranges, and a pottery jug.

  “I should be grateful my father never decided to cast me in clay,” continued Mlle. Griscogne. “He might have forgotten to crack the mold.”

  Letting Mlle. Griscogne loose, Daubier waved that charge aside. “I should like to paint you again. If your employer can spare you,” he added with a little bow to André.

  André raised both hands in a gesture of defeat. “For art, what cannot be spared? But I would appreciate if you would come to the house to do it rather than remove my governess whenever the inspiration so moves you.”

  Daubier looked a little sheepish. “Fair enough. Call it an old man’s whim, a contrast of now and then.” He regarded André’s governess thoughtfully. “I would resurrect the finch, but I don’t think she would suit you anymore.”

  “Just hand me a bat,” suggested Mlle. Griscogne. “Or perhaps a crow. Something suitably dark and sober.”

  As an attempt at a drollery, it fell flat. Daubier, good old soul that he was, looked troubled.

  André felt obscurely guilty, without being quite sure why. Perhaps because he had, in his own mind, equated her with just that, bats and crows and other suitably dark and dismal creatures, designed to provide a necessary but uninspiring service. Yet, when he had caught her a few moments ago, that had been flesh beneath his fingers, warm and supple, rather than a compilation of old rulers and primers glued into the semblance of the female form. He had felt a moment of surprise that the limbs beneath his fingers were made of flesh and muscle, warm beneath their layers of wool and linen. Surprise, and something else entirely, something one had no business thinking of one’s children’s governess.

  What had he expected, wrought iron? André asked himself irritably. Flesh was the usual matter of human composition, even in governesses.

  Daubier dealt André a friendly whack on the back that nearly sent him staggering. “I don’t know how you found her, but take good care of this one, Jaouen. Her father was one of the foremost sculptors of our generation.”