The Orchid Affair Read online

  “These are dangerous times, citoyenne,” he answered in kind, using the old Revolutionary address that had already all but fallen out of favor. “One can’t be too careful. Would you prefer sweets or savories?”

  “Savories,” said Laura. “Sweets cloy.”

  Jaouen raised a brow at her. “One could never accuse you of that.”

  Behind them, Daubier beamed benevolently, a proud father sending his daughter off to her first ball. An illusion, Laura reminded herself, and a ridiculous one. Daubier had no daughters, and she made an unlikely debutante. She was thirty-two, not sixteen anymore. She was a working woman, not a girl from a fairy tale to be showered with belated blessings by a benevolent fairy godfather in a too-bright waistcoat.

  On Jaouen’s arm, the crowd that had first ignored her fell away for her, clearing a path, nodding and smiling. Such was the power of the favored successor of the Minister of Police.

  He looked his role tonight. Gone was the usual rough uniform of old breeches and a brown coat. Instead, he wore black, tailored to a nicety, with a snowy white stock and a waistcoat in maroon and silver—all in excellent taste and richly made. His rough hair had been brushed smooth, but the cowlick still stood stubbornly up in the back. Other than that, he looked what he was—the master of this establishment, magically transformed for one night from dilapidation to elegance.

  Laura wished, foolishly and futilely, that she had put her hair up after all. Just one curl, one frivolous gesture.

  Oh, no. She wasn’t meant to be thinking like this, and certainly not about her employer. It was only the fairy-tale trappings, she told herself—the ball, the candles, the prince.

  Not a prince, she reminded herself. An employee of the Prefecture. The man on whom she was supposed to be spying.

  Laura made to extract her arm from his, addressing him without any of the bantering tone. “I did mean it, what I said before. You needn’t waste your time on me. You have other guests who want tending to, I’m sure.”

  Jaouen looked at her with amusement. “You don’t accept anything graciously, do you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Invitations, carriage rides, advances on your salary . . .”

  “Would you have?” Gratuitous gifts generally made her wonder why they were being given.

  Jaouen understood without being told. “No good deed without an ulterior motive?”

  Laura wondered what his ulterior motives might be. Especially regarding her. “Do you disagree?”

  “Not at all,” Jaouen agreed, tucking her hand more securely against his arm. “Most seeming acts of altruism tend to be motivated by something else. So much for the innate goodness of man.”

  His cynicism didn’t ring true. She remembered the books in his study, the well-thumbed volumes of Rousseau and Sieyès. He had been a reformer once and, she suspected, an idealist.

  “All right, then. If it’s not altruism, why waste your time with me?”

  “Because it pleases me to do so. And”—Jaouen added—“because I would rather speak with you than the rest of this lot.” He eyed Augustus Whittlesby, garbed in the full splendor of flowing sleeves and artistically misbuttoned waistcoat, before adding prosaically, “I don’t much care for poets. Or poetry.”

  Laura didn’t mention the volume in the nursery with his name on it. To Julie, who saw no use in poetry. “Why fill your house with them, then?”

  Jaouen shrugged. “Julie started it. I keep them on for her sake. Vol-au-vent?”

  Laura waved the pastry aside. “Is it always the same group?”

  “It varies. Daubier generally attends—but I’m sure you expected that.”

  “He never did like to miss a party,” murmured Laura.

  “You speak of him in the past tense. As if he were no longer with us.” The candlelight danced along the rims of Jaouen’s spectacles, turning base metal to gold. He was watching her too closely for comfort, picking her apart like the subject of one of his reports.

  Laura shrugged uncomfortably. “That’s what he was to me, part of my past. I haven’t seen him for sixteen years. You would have used the past tense too.”

  He watched her, saying nothing, waiting for her to go on. An old technique, and an effective one.

  Laura hastily changed the subject, gesturing out into the room at large. “Who are all these others? You don’t expect me to believe that he’s a poet.” Laura indicated a prosperous-looking man with long gray side-burns. “Or she.”

  She pointed to the Pink Carnation, sitting with her hands folded in her lap, serenely accepting the accolades of a young man with wildly disordered hair. Another agent? Or a genuine admirer?

  Apparently, it was the fashion to be in love with Miss Wooliston.

  Jaouen’s eyes passed over Miss Wooliston without interest. “He is a speculator in army contracts. A successful one. She, I believe, is the cousin of one of Bonaparte’s courtiers.”

  His seeming casualness didn’t fool her. She would be willing to wager he owned complete dossiers on each one. “Why invite them to your salons? They’re hardly likely to paint the Sistine Chapel.”

  “Neither did Pope Sixtus. Where would artists be without patrons to pay them? All of the people in this room serve each other in some way. The beautiful young ladies play muse to their pet poets, and the elderly financiers pay for the pigments of the painters. They rely upon one another.”

  “So you bring them together.” Laura raised a brow. “How very altruistic of you.”

  “Are you trying to catch me out, Mademoiselle Griscogne?”

  For a moment, Laura sensed something beneath the bantering question, a hint of real wariness. But it was gone before she could catch it, hidden beneath the shimmering, shifting play of light on the glass that armed Jaouen’s eyes.

  “Well?” asked Laura daringly. “If there is no altruism, what is your motive for these gatherings?”

  “Not the sonnets,” Jaouen said dryly. Without discussion, they resumed their progress, walking arm in arm through the throng. Jaouen nodded in response to the greetings of a group of ladies but didn’t stop. “Call it inertia rather than altruism. These gatherings were Daubier’s idea originally, when Julie was first exhibiting. He held them in his studio.”

  “In the Place Royale,” supplied Laura.

  Jaouen glanced down at her. “Were you there? I should think I would have remembered.”

  “No. Those gatherings must have started after—well, after.”

  After England. She had come close to giving herself away there. She mustn’t forget who he was, no matter how amiable he was making himself.

  No matter how much she enjoyed his company.

  Jaouen diverted the conversation into less dangerous waters. “Was Daubier’s studio as much a mess then as it is now?”

  Laura accepted the diversion gratefully. “I hadn’t really thought of it for years. Not so much a mess . . . I thought of it as an Aladdin’s cave. You never knew what you might stumble over. He kept all sorts of props scattered about—swords and shields and bits of pillars.”

  “And finches,” said Jaouen. His eyes met hers in private communication, cutting out the world around them.

  “Did he ever make you sit for him?” Laura asked quickly. “Daubier?”

  “Me?” Jaouen’s eyebrows rose over the rims of his glasses. “Never. Not all of us are innately paintable.”

  “You mean you didn’t want to sit still.” It was hard to imagine him as anything but in motion.

  Jaouen’s lips lifted at the corners. “That, too.”

  “Did your wife never paint you?” As soon as Laura asked, she wished she hadn’t. Jaouen had made it clear that his wife was a closed topic. “Never mind. I shouldn’t have—”

  “She did. The critics consider it one of her less successful works.”

  “Mmm,” said Laura, for lack of anything better to say. “Well, she wasn’t really known for realism, was she?”

  “What makes you think I wasn’t
an allegory?”

  Laura considered. “I can’t really see you decked out in a bedsheet, playing Peace and Plenty.”

  “Is it the concept you object to, or the bedsheet?” he inquired.

  “Both,” she said boldly.

  “So did I.” There was a pause, and then he smiled. “Especially to the bedsheet.”

  Somehow, the image was more unsettling without the sheet than with it.

  “They are useful things in their way, bedsheets,” said Laura at random. “But they leave something to be desired as an article of costume.”

  “Hmm,” said Jaouen. His eyes narrowed on something over her shoulder, his attention directed elsewhere. “Will you excuse me, Mademoiselle Griscogne?”

  Without waiting for her permission, Jaouen dropped her arm. Laura felt curiously marooned, like a promontory suddenly chopped into an island. “There is a matter that demands my immediate attention.”

  “Of course. Thank you. I shouldn’t have kept you so long.” Laura tucked her misplaced hand at her side, feeling for a pocket that wasn’t there.

  Jaouen nodded, but absently. He might have been gone already. “Mademoiselle.”

  And he was away, leaving Laura standing by herself in the center of the room.

  Chapter 16

  Had she offended him with her comments about his wife? And bedsheets?

  The elegantly gowned throng closed about Jaouen, half a dozen people clamoring for his attention.

  Laura looked down at her own soot-colored skirts. Or was it simply that he had used up the time allotted for being kind to the governess? It had been too easy, for those few moments, to forget the nature of her position in his household.

  Both her positions in his household.

  She had overheard something in that green marble anteroom, something she hadn’t been meant to hear, something that had made both Daubier and Jaouen visibly uncomfortable, each in his own way. She hadn’t heard enough to decipher it, only the merest fragment of a phrase. She had been left only with an impression of something left undone.

  If Jaouen’s intention had been to distract her, he had succeeded admirably.

  They had ended their tour of the rooms in a room lined with easels, depicting various new works by emerging artists. Laura moved at random to the first easel, feigning interest.

  Someone moved to stand beside her. Laura instinctively moved aside, making room.

  There was a whisper of muslin as the lady followed, sidestepping as Laura sidestepped.

  Laura moved again.

  The lady moved with her.

  Frowning, Laura glanced sideways, prepared to glare down the person intruding upon her space. She might be plainly garbed, but art was for everyone, and she didn’t mean to be rushed.

  She encountered an elegant, classical profile and one dangling blue enamel and seed pearl earring. The lady continued to gaze straight ahead, ostensibly examining the painting on the easel in front of them.

  “An intriguing composition, is it not?” said the Pink Carnation.

  Who in the blazes had invited Gaston Delaroche?

  André twisted his way through the throng in the music room, hoping he was mistaken, but knowing he was not. Among the ladies’ pale muslins and the flamboyant garb of the gentlemen, that rusty black coat was unmistakable. Delaroche stood out like a raven in a dovecote.

  Delaroche was already setting the pigeons’ feathers fluttering; André could hear the rustle of fabric and snapping of fans as people hastened to get out of his way. Everyone knew about Gaston Delaroche. He was as well known as the Black Death and just about as popular.

  “Gaston!” André hailed him from across the room. The former fourth-most-feared man in France hadn’t bothered to remove his hat or cloak. Because they gave him extra height and bulk? Or for other reasons? André felt his blood quicken with apprehension, but he took pains not to show it. “How kind of you to patronize my humble gathering! I don’t recall inviting you.”

  “The Ministry of Police needs no invitation.” Delaroche’s voice was pitched to carry.

  A crash punctuated the statement. A lady had dropped her champagne glass.

  André nodded to a waiter to clear it up. “I hadn’t thought you cared for art, Gaston. Broadening your horizons?”

  Delaroche frowned. “I have no time for fripperies. I am here on official business.”

  André couldn’t quite bring himself to take the other man’s arm, so he dealt him a comradely smack on the back instead. “Well, now that you’re here, you might as well take advantage of the opportunity. I believe you know the First Consul’s daughter, Madame Bonaparte?”

  Hortense Bonaparte was nowhere to be seen, but André was counting on Delaroche’s snobbery to override whatever mischief he had planned. For all his supposed egalitarian principles, the man was determined to regain his standing with the First Consul. André was gambling that he wouldn’t make a scene in front of the First Consul’s beloved stepdaughter.

  The dice wobbled and fell off the table. Delaroche’s thin lips twisted into a smile. “This concerns Madame Bonaparte, as it must all good citizens who have the welfare of the First Consul at heart.”

  Trepidation settled like a block of ice in André’s chest. “As does everyone here,” he said with forced bonhomie.

  Delaroche’s smile never wavered. A bad sign. A very bad sign. “Not quite everyone.”

  Right. Enough of the indirect approach. Taking the other man by the arm, André turned him to the side. “This is a private party, Delaroche. Whatever it is can wait until tomorrow.”

  Delaroche’s expression was dangerously smug.

  “No, Jaouen. I don’t believe that it can.”

  Laura concentrated on the painting in front of her, keeping her eyes squarely on the canvas.

  Next to her, the Pink Carnation tilted her head, scrutinizing the painting on the easel. “A very bold use of color,” she commented, as if to herself.

  It was a historical allegory, commemorating some significant Roman moment or other. It was the sort of painting Julie Beniet had become famous for, but it had been executed without her skill. The painted figures’ limbs looked stiff and unnatural, their togas like—well, like bedsheets.

  “I find it overdone,” said Laura stiffly. “There’s no life to it.”

  Were they speaking in code? If so, Laura wasn’t sure what the code was meant to be. She didn’t know what to make of the fact that they were speaking at all.

  The Pink Carnation nodded thoughtfully, setting her earrings swaying.

  It would be very easy to hate her, thought Laura. Miss Jane Wooliston was the very image of the style currently in vogue—tall and slender, with a face that might have been modeled off an antique cameo. Her jewelry was muted, only a small gold locket on a blue silk ribbon and a pair of blue enamel earrings decorated with seed pearls, but it made the toilettes of the other women look overdone and gaudy. No wonder she was an ornament of Bonaparte’s court. Nature had given her so much. Not only beauty, but the wit to employ it to good purpose.

  It would have been easier to tolerate her if she had been beautiful but dim; or clever and plain. One could respect clever and plain. But to be beautiful and clever seemed like an oversight on the part of the gods.

  She was young, too, this Pink Carnation. So close, Laura could see the smoothness of her skin, none of the creases in her forehead or lines down the side of her mouth that Laura saw every time she looked in her own mirror.

  How old was the Pink Carnation? Twenty-two? Twenty-three? A good decade younger than Laura in any event. It made Laura feel tired and more than a little depressed that this debutante, this marble creature in white muslin, should have achieved so much with so seeming little effort, while Laura, with all her struggle and strife, had managed so little.

  The Pink Carnation tilted her head, examining the painting as if weighing Laura’s opinion. “I agree,” she said at last. “This one may be more in the current style, but I prefer that one.”
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  She gestured to the next easel over, which held a much smaller painting in tones of green and brown, depicting a stretch of woods on a cloudy day.

  Laura obediently moved to stand in front of it. “It’s very . . . pastoral.”

  What in heaven’s name was she trying to tell her?

  The Pink Carnation gazed at the painting, her elegant profile serene. “Sometimes, among the bustle of town, it can be pleasant to lose yourself in a bit of greenery. It’s so peaceful among the trees. So quiet.” Without any change of inflection, she continued, “I often go walking in the Jardins du Luxembourg. I like to go in the morning, while the mist is still fresh on the ground. So refreshing, wouldn’t you agree?”

  Without waiting for an answer, she turned away, flapping a hand in the direction of the American woman.

  “Emma!” The American looked around, caught in the middle of haranguing Augustus Whittlesby. “Emma! Do come here and give me your opinion of this painting.”

  She had been dismissed, Laura realized, neatly and decisively. Anyone watching would have seen Miss Wooliston making the minimum of polite conversation with the awkward odd woman out, and then, as any of them would, calling for reinforcements.

  The American complied, cheerfully enough. Whittlesby looked distinctly relieved.

  “You know I’m hopeless at painting,” the American said, squeezing her way in between Laura and the Pink Carnation.

  Miss Wooliston rolled her eyes at her friend. “I’m not asking you to paint it, merely to critique it. Tell me if I’m about to waste my pin money.”

  The American eyed the first easel without favor. “Please tell me you’re not planning to buy Caesar’s Last Stand.”

  “No, not that one. The forest scene. It’s like a walk in the woods at ten in the morning.”

  Emma examined it critically. “I would have said afternoon, but it’s so overcast it’s hard to tell. Wouldn’t you prefer something a little . . . brighter?”

  “Really?” The Pink Carnation slid an arm through her friend’s, drawing her away, away from Laura. “I would have called it atmospheric, like something out of a novel by Mrs. Radcliffe.”