The Orchid Affair Read online

  “I cut my teeth on landscapes,” protested Daubier. As if realizing he’d been tricked, he let his chin fall back into his chest. “I’ll think about it,” he mumbled.

  “Cécile tells me our first play is to be set in Venice,” said Laura. “In a great palazzo. Rather like that place where you visited us, in ’82.”

  “You mean when your mother . . .”

  “Was having an affair with the nephew of the Doge?” said Laura calmly. “And Papa was commissioned to create a series of sculptures for his garden? Yes.”

  “It was a pretty little palace,” said Daubier musingly, “right on the canal. When the sun set, the stones looked golden. It would be hard to reproduce just that shade. . . .”

  “Would you mind getting the door?” said Laura demurely to André, casting him a look of triumph.

  “With pleasure.” He swung it open, inclining his head as she passed, giving credit as it was due. Daubier still looked like a nag put out in the knacker’s yard, but he was standing a little straighter than he had before, his eyes a little more alert. He was abstracted, but it was a reverie of color and shade. They weren’t out of the woods yet, but the immediate crisis had been averted.

  “At last!” someone cried. A young woman came bustling over to them, her sprig muslin too light for the weather, her hair pulled back with a fashionable bandeau. There was an impish charm to her mobile face “Laura’s André! We’ve been longing to meet you!”

  Laura kept her arm through Daubier’s. “Cécile, this is my father, Monsieur Désormais, and my husband, André.”

  Seen closer, Cécile wasn’t so young as she had appeared. Beneath the youthful curls, her brown eyes were surprisingly shrewd. André saw her quick, concerned glance at Daubier. “Your father . . .”

  “Was injured by the fall of a set. It was a most unfortunate accident,” said Laura. “The troupe refused to let him stay on. That is why you find us as we are, looking again for work at this inhospitable time of year.”

  Cécile nodded approvingly. “I am sorry for your misfortune, but your loss is our gain. I don’t know what we should have done without you.” She held out a hand to André, taking his in a firm grasp. “Welcome, Monsieur, to our troupe. You see us in a sadly reduced state. It is very fortuitous that you should be out of work, just as two of our company were unexpectedly forced to take their leave of us. We have been half-distracted, trying to figure out how to divide the roles to maintain our engagements.”

  André raised both brows. “Forced?”

  “By cruel circumstance.” From the smug set of her mouth, André doubted there was anything the least bit circumstantial about it. “Our Capitano was taken ill last night. The doctors do not believe he should be moved for at least a month. Our Ruffiana has elected to stay with him, to nurse him back to health. So you find us two actors short. To make matters worse, Ruffiana also served as our wardrobe mistress. But now we have a new wardrobe mistress and your charming Laura to be our Ruffiana.”

  “The shrewish matron?” André looked quizzically at Laura.

  “Don’t cast stones until you hear your own part. Philippe is to understudy the heroic lead and help Mons—er, Papa, with the scenery. You shall take over the roles of the Captain and the Doctor.”

  The blowhard and the pompous ass. Point taken.

  “I believe I can manage that,” said André mildly. “Although I always fancied myself more of a Scaramouche.”

  Cécile cocked her head. “That might be arranged. Our current scenarios don’t call for it, but if you wish to contrive another, you can submit it for the consideration of the troupe. We work on a democratic model, you see. Within reason.”

  “Meaning some of the demos are more important than others?”

  Cécile put a finger to her lips. “Shhh. Don’t tell them. We do like to maintain our illusions.” Putting her hands on her lips, she turned and surveyed the company. She indicated an elderly man whose few wisps of hair were so white that they showed yellow against the pink of his pate. “That man at the trestle over there, the one in the pale blue satin, that’s our Pantaloon. He’s the head of the troupe. Others have come and gone but Pantaloon has been here since the beginning.”

  Pantaloon. The blustering father figure of the Commedia dell’Arte. This man looked like a good bluster would send him toppling right over. His skin was so pale it was practically translucent.

  Cécile waved an insouciant hand. “You can just call him Pantaloon. We all do. He’s been Pantaloon for so long, I doubt he remembers what his real name was. Next to him, in the green velvet, that’s our Leandro. He plays all the young lovers. Balcony-climbing, sword fights, mooning about ladies’ chambers, that’s his job.”

  Like Pantaloon, Leandro didn’t seem best suited for his role. He was a gawky youth, with arms and legs too long and thin for his frame. The long hair he wore loose about his face did little to disguise a bad case of adolescent spots. André only hoped that makeup and costume would compensate for what nature had failed to provide.

  Mlle. Griscogne had never said the Commedia dell’Aruzzio was a successful theatrical troupe.

  So much the better, thought André philosophically. Their own incompetence wouldn’t show to such disadvantage.

  Next to Leandro sat a short, ferret-faced man in a brocade jacket. “That’s Harlequin. He rooms with Leandro and doubles as our cook when we’re living rough. He may not look like much, but he cooks divinely.” Cécile’s mouth twisted. “And then there’s Rose.”

  “Rose?” There didn’t seem to be anyone else in the room.

  Cécile nodded to the stairs leading up to the second story. “Ah. Pat on her cue, as always.”

  On the landing, a woman stood, her profile to the stairs. Blond curls tumbled down her back in artful disarray. She wore a gown more showy than stylish, flounced and frilled within an inch of its life. Long earrings, confections of enamel and seed pearl, bounced against her curls. She stood directly beneath the window so that what little light there was fell on her upraised face.

  “That’s our Rose,” said Cécile acerbically. “Never misses an entrance.”

  “Your ingénue?” guessed André.

  “The very one.” It didn’t take much to guess what Cécile thought of her colleague. “Inamorata. Both onstage and off.”

  Rose’s carefully contrived pose wasn’t intended for their benefit. As they watched, a man followed her onto the landing, drawn like a wooden horse on a string. His uniform coat was unbuttoned, his stock untied. It took very little imagination to guess what had been going on beyond the landing.

  Rose held out both hands, her fingers all but hidden among lace ruffles. The man took them in both of his own.

  And André took a step back, away from the stairs.

  “What is it?” whispered Laura. “André?”

  He slid an arm around her waist, drawing her into the crook of his arm, the pose of an old, married couple. She came stiffly into his embrace; he could feel the tension in every line of her body.

  He set his lips by her ear. “Do you know who that is?”

  She gave a short shake of her head. To an outsider, it might have looked like a nuzzle.

  “Murat,” he whispered. “Bonaparte’s brother-in-law.”

  Not just Bonaparte’s brother-in-law. The Governor of Paris. The man who had ordered all the gates of the city closed and all carriages searched. It was Murat who had presided over the “trials” of Querelle, Picot, and the rest. Admittedly, the intelligence was not his own; he was only a figurehead.

  But he knew André. Not well, but well enough to pick him out of a crowd, even among this group of ill-assorted theatricals.

  Of all the ill luck. Of all the actresses in Paris, why did Murat have to be sleeping with this one?

  Assuming, of course, that it was only ill luck.

  Murat wouldn’t know of Daubier’s escape, not yet. But if he saw André, or Daubier, with the troupe . . . The game would be up before it had begun.

&
nbsp; “Silly, darling,” said Laura, in a voice unlike her own. “Your cravat is crooked again.”

  She pushed him so that his back was to Murat, reaching up to fiddle with the bow at his neck. “Does he know you?” she murmured.

  “Yes.”

  Laura swallowed hard.

  Behind him, he could hear the sound of steps on the stairs, the click of Murat’s boots, the gentle pat of Rose’s slippers.

  “. . . just a short tour of the provinces,” he could hear Rose saying. And “. . . miss me?”

  André’s chest was tight from holding his breath. He could hear the sounds of the coffee room with abnormal clarity: the click of Jeannette’s knitting needles, Pierre-André’s childish laughter, the slurping sound of Pantaloon drinking coffee from his saucer.

  “Don’t turn around, whatever you do,” Laura muttered. “They’re right behind you.”

  Breaking her own rule, she darted a quick glance over his shoulder. Whatever she saw must have decided her. Leaning forward, she placed a hand against André’s cheek. She wasn’t wearing gloves. Her hand was cold.

  He lifted his own hand to cover it, both reassurance and warning.

  “He can’t be allowed to see your face,” she murmured. He could feel her breath on his lips. Her eyes were very dark in her pale face, the pupil and the iris all but indistinguishable.

  “Any ideas?” he whispered back.

  For a moment, she hesitated. Then she tilted her head back, her dark hair tangling with the red wool of her shawl.

  “This,” she said, and pressed her lips to his.

  Chapter 24

  The last time Laura had kissed someone had been the summer of 1794.

  She had been twenty-two; he had been the cousin of the family for whom she was working at the time, visiting for a house party. Generally, she knew better than to permit liberties. But it had been June and the garden had been in bloom. There had been a mist rising off the river and Chinese lanterns hanging from the trees. She had let him lead her by the hand, down the boxwood paths, to the place where the garden met the river, in the no-man’s-land between dusk and dawn, knowing that it meant nothing more than what it was—a stolen bit of fleeting pleasure. He had departed the next morning and she had returned to her schoolroom. She couldn’t remember his name, much less his face. There was only the shadowy recollection of a hand on her cheek, the brush of breath against her lips.

  She had nearly forgotten what it was like, this pressure of lip to lip.

  She would have said she was beyond such things, long since rendered immune to human desires. She intended the kiss entirely as an act of expedience. It was nothing more than a tableau, a set piece, two lovers frozen in embrace, their faces conveniently blotted from view.

  That was the idea, at any rate.

  André’s hand slid up beneath the hair at the nape of her neck. She hadn’t remembered this, the caress of bare fingers in her hair, disarranging her hair ribbon, making her skin tingle. His other hand slid around her waist, beneath the woolly mass of her shawl, holding her firm at the small of her back.

  “Relax,” he murmured against her lips. “You’re as stiff as a board.”

  “Am n—,” she began, but the word was lost as he bent her backwards and kissed her.

  It was quite a thorough performance.

  Laura clung to that thought, or tried to. Performance. Acting. Her arms went around his neck, holding tight. Holding to keep from falling, if she were being honest. She’d meant to monitor Murat’s movements, but she found herself closing her eyes, clinging to André’s neck, and, heaven help her, kissing him back. For the performance. All for the performance.

  There were hoots and cheers from the company. Laura blinked, forcing her eyes to focus.

  Murat was gone.

  There were grins on the faces of many of their new colleagues. Jeannette was scowling at her knitting. Gabrielle was scowling at Laura.

  Oh, dear. Perhaps they should tell the troupe that Pierre-André and Gabrielle were her stepchildren. That would explain the look of death on her so-called daughter’s face.

  “Well,” Laura said. Her brain didn’t seem to want to work properly. “That served its purpose.”

  “Purpose. Yes.” André cleared his throat. “Good thinking, there. That was a, er, clever ploy.”

  Laura managed a crooked smile. “No one will doubt our relationship now.” The words stuck in her throat, but she forced them out. “You’re a very good actor.”

  “I had an excellent leading lady.” He slid an arm around her shoulders and squeezed, in a counterfeit of affection. He was a very good actor, indeed. She needed to remember that. “Shall we meet the troupe?”

  Laura nodded. “The sooner we’re away from here, the better.”

  Jaouen’s arm tightened around her shoulder. “I’ll be a happier man once we’re past the gates.”

  “Mmph,” she agreed, clumsily matching her steps to his.

  It felt odd, and more than odd, to be so intimately pressed against someone, with all the assumptions that went with it. When was the last time someone had held her so? Years.

  A sham, she reminded herself. As flimsy as a scroll of scenery, rolled down for an audience one moment and the next rolled up again, reduced to nothing more than cloth and paint.

  She would have to watch herself, to be wary of such intimacies. It wouldn’t do to fall prey to her own deception. She knew what she was to him—a means of escape, nothing more.

  “Well, well!” Harlequin was the first to rise to greet them, pounding André companionably on the shoulder. “I see you’ll be usurping Leandro’s roles next.”

  André dropped his arm from Laura’s back, extending a hand to Harlequin. “André Malcontre. Your Inamorato is safe from me. I’m too old to play the lover.”

  Harlequin cast Laura a significant look. “You could have fooled me. Madame Malcontre, I take it?”

  Laura made her curtsy. “The very one. But I hope we shan’t be so formal. You can call me . . . Ruffiana.”

  Harlequin pursed his lips appreciatively. “Getting into role already! You’ll put us all to shame. Except, of course, our Rose, who plays her love scenes both onstage and off.”

  Rose stuck her pretty nose in the air. “Simply because I won’t play one with you . . .”

  “Have you seen me serenading in the mud outside your wagon?” demanded Harlequin derisively.

  The actress reddened. “I should have thought a wallow would have been just to your taste.”

  “Better my sty than yours.”

  “Just because some of us like elevated company . . .”

  “Don’t look too high, Rose,” drawled Harlequin. “You just might fly too close to the sun.”

  “Too close to the sun?” The Duc de Berry stepped forward. “I should think the sun would hide its rays in shame. You eclipse it, lady, as the sun does the moon.”

  “That doesn’t quite scan,” murmured André to Laura.

  Rose looked de Berry up and down, torn between a smirk and a snub. “And you are?”

  “Philippe Malcontre,” Laura put in hastily, before de Berry could speak. “My husband’s younger brother. He is to understudy Leandro. He’s also very good at carrying things. Sets, props.”

  “Oh. An actor.”

  “Like you,” needled Harlequin.

  Rose cast him a freezing glance. “Are we to stand here all day?” she demanded loftily.

  Harlequin clapped his hands. “Hey, you!” he called. “Milady grows impatient. We can’t have that, now, can we?”

  De Berry stepped quickly forward. “You must allow me to help you to your chariot.”

  “You mean her wagon?” interjected Cécile.

  “With you in it,” de Berry said, never removing his eyes from Rose, “a farm cart would look like a phaeton.”

  “Poor, overused Icarus,” muttered Harlequin, as they followed Rose and de Berry out. “That’s twice in one conversation.”

  “You’ve studied th
e classics?” Laura asked politely. She wouldn’t have thought it. He had the wiry build and chipped teeth of the former guttersnipe.

  Harlequin made a rueful face. “Used to be a schoolteacher. Then I got myself clapped up for debt. And now you find me here.”

  Laura nodded her understanding. “I was a governess once.”

  “Pounding Latin into the heads of the ungrateful young? Then you understand how it can drive one to drink. You have your own now, though.” Harlequin nodded at Pierre-André and Gabrielle, being hustled along by Jeannette.

  Laura leaned forward confidingly. “My stepchildren. André and I have only been married a year now.”

  “Ah,” said Harlequin knowingly. He nodded at André as André fell into pace beside them. “Practically newlyweds.”

  Laura tilted her head up at André. “It feels like it. Doesn’t it, darling?”

  André threaded his arm through hers. From the outside, it looked like an affectionate gesture. Only Laura felt the warning pinch of his fingers. “As if every day were the first. May I borrow you for a moment, dear heart?”

  “Why borrow what is yours to take?” said Laura extravagantly, but ruined it by skidding in the mud.

  André hauled her upright again. “Why borrow what is yours to take?”

  Laura snuggled against his side. “We’ve only been married a year. Look besotted.”

  André lowered his lips to her ear. “Was that wise? Telling him you were a governess? Rose may not be the only one with government connections.”

  “I hardly think it will damn us. I’m not the only former governess in Paris. The closer we stay to the truth, the less likely we are to make mistakes.”

  “Newlyweds?” said André.

  “Aren’t we?” countered Laura. “I certainly never contemplated marriage to you before yesterday.”

  “Fair point.” André’s tired face quirked into a smile. “You can’t get much more newlywed than that.”