The Orchid Affair Page 30

  “Dangerous?” asked Laura, gathering her children closer to her. Gabrielle gave an exaggerated shiver, her eyes wide.

  “Not that kind of dangerous,” the guard said kindly. “You don’t have anything to fear. But they’re having us search every carriage until we find them.”

  “Even theatre troupes?” Laura grimaced comically.

  “Even theatre troupes.” The soldier laughed with her at the absurdity of it. If Laura’s laughter was a little strained, he didn’t seem to notice. “Ah, well. Can’t be too careful.”

  “It must be a bit tiresome,” said Laura sympathetically.

  “That’s the word for it,” the soldier agreed. “The traffic on the road isn’t what it would be in summer, but it’s still enough to keep us hopping. You’d be amazed how many carts go through this gate every day.”

  “At this point,” said Laura honestly, “I doubt anything could amaze me.”

  Turning to the children, the soldier wagged a finger at them. “You be good and don’t give your mother any trouble. Madame.”

  He handed her back their papers and waved them through.

  Laura slapped the reins, setting the mules back into motion. Very slow motion. Theirs were not beasts that believed in bestirring themselves. It was probably for the best. A precipitate departure might have caused suspicion. She thought about André, in the back, listening and stewing. There was no noise from the body of the wagon. Either André had really gone to sleep or he was exerting extreme self-discipline.

  It would take a great deal of self-discipline to perpetrate a deception such as he had for as long as he had.

  How long had it been? In the rush of arranging their departure, there had been little time to speculate. She wondered just when Jaouen had made the switch from Revolutionary functionary to Royalist agent and whether it had had anything to do with his decision to leave his children behind in Nantes for so long.

  Once they were out of earshot of the town walls, Laura turned to Gabrielle and said quietly, “That was beautifully done. Thank you.”

  Gabrielle scooted to the far side of the bench. Now that the immediate danger was done, their truce was over. “I wasn’t going to let them hurt Papa.”

  Translation: Don’t think I did this for you.

  Still, Laura believed in credit where it was due. “Not everyone would have that sort of ingenuity. You saved us a great deal of bother.”

  And probably more than bother, but there was no point in scaring the girl by saying so. Gabrielle was a bright girl; she must have a fairly good idea by now of what they were up against.

  Gabrielle eyed her suspiciously, searching for the catch.

  Sighing, Laura twisted on the hard seat, looking down at Gabrielle. “I know you don’t like this. I don’t particularly like it either.”

  Gabrielle mumbled something.

  Laura carried resolutely on. “We’re saddled with each other, whether we like it or not. Your father needs both of us—”

  That had been the wrong thing to say. Gabrielle’s eyebrows were doing their best storm-cloud impersonation.

  “Your father needs both of us to work together,” Laura corrected herself hastily. “Your brother is too young to fully comprehend the dangers—”

  “I’m not young! I’m four and three quarters!” piped up Pierre-André.

  Laura raised her eyebrows at Gabrielle. “My point. But you’re not. You understand the danger we’re all in. It will take us a month to reach the coast. Once in England, you can be well rid of me. For that month, though, we need to pretend to be a family. A reasonably happy family.”

  Gabrielle considered.

  Laura pressed her advantage. “I’m not your governess anymore. Whatever we tell the others, we both know that I’m not really your mother or even your stepmother. I have no claims on either your obedience or your affection. All I can ask is for your assistance. Not for my sake. For your family’s.”

  Gabrielle toyed with the pages of her book. It was a nervous habit, Laura had noticed, as other girls might play with their hair or fiddle with a ring. She looked challengingly at Laura. “Why are you helping us?”

  “Because I adore traveling through the countryside in the rain.”

  Gabrielle’s face closed in on itself again. She shrugged down into her own wrap, her face sullen.

  Laura could have kicked herself.

  The girl was right, that hadn’t been fair. If she expected Gabrielle to deal honestly with her, she had to deal honestly with Gabrielle. As honestly as she could, at any rate. She couldn’t very well tell the girl that she was accompanying them because she had been ordered to do so by an English spy named after a particularly frivolous sort of flower.

  “I owe you a duty,” Laura said slowly. She could feel Gabrielle slowly looking at her, a bunched-up figure in the corner of the bench. Laura looked straight ahead, out over the road. “When I agreed to take on your education, I contracted an obligation to you. I don’t believe in leaving tasks undone.”

  That much was true, at least.

  “I thought you said you weren’t our governess anymore.” Gabrielle’s voice was defiant, but there was a tinge of hesitation in it.

  “Not officially,” hedged Laura. Blast clever children. She decided to try another tactic. “To be honest, I mostly came for Monsieur Daubier. He was a friend of my parents’ when I was your age.”

  Gabrielle cast her a quick, surprised glance.

  “Yes, I did have parents once,” said Laura dryly, and the little girl flushed and dropped her head. “Monsieur Daubier was always kind to me. It seemed only right to do something kind for him.”

  Not only was the sentiment mawkish, it was as riddled with potential inconsistencies as old cheese. Fortunately, Gabrielle’s attention was elsewhere.

  “What happened to your parents?” she asked awkwardly. Laura didn’t miss the telling glance she sent over her shoulder, at the inside of the wagon.

  “They went sailing in a storm,” said Laura matter-of-factly. “The boat capsized.”

  “Oh,” said Gabrielle. Laura could see her processing the information. She looked at Laura, almost belligerently. “My mother died of a fever.”

  “It doesn’t matter how it happens, does it?” said Laura. “It hurts either way.”

  Gabrielle didn’t answer, but her chin moved just the tiniest fraction of an inch. Laura took that as a yes.

  Behind them, the curtains blocking off the body of the wagon rustled. André Jaouen’s head appeared through the gaudy hangings. Beneath his spectacles, his eyes were the same bright blue-green as his daughter’s. There was something else there too, a self-containment that they both shared.

  “Feeling better, darling?” Laura asked flippantly.

  André gave her a wry look. “Aside from the hangover I presume I’m meant to be suffering.”

  “That’s what you get for being a dangerous, drunken beast.”

  “I take it we’re clear?”

  “Thanks to Gabrielle,” said Laura, moving over to make room on the seat between herself and his daughter. “She very cunningly saved the day.”

  André clambered over onto the box, dropping into place next to Gabrielle. He placed his hand to his daughter’s head in a fleeting gesture of affection. “I wouldn’t have expected anything less.”

  He missed the look on Gabrielle’s face, but Laura didn’t. She was watching her father like a puppy left outside someone’s back door, hoping to be petted but afraid to ask.

  Oblivious, André turned to Laura and held out his other hand. “Give me a crack at those reins, will you? Let’s see if I still remember how to drive.”

  Taking the reins made André feel slightly less useless.

  Slightly.

  He had lain on the pallet in the back of the wagon, his hat tipped over his head, racked with the realization of his own incapacity. He wanted to be up there on the box, deflecting the guard, making everything right.

  Instead, he was flat on his back, pre
tending to be in a drunken stupor while his nine-year-old daughter pulled his fat out of the fire. Oh, André knew it was the expedient course, but it rankled almost beyond bearing to know that the only way to ensure the safety of his family was to refrain from doing anything at all. Inaction was a great deal harder than action.

  Some might say he had done enough already.

  André looked at his son, half-asleep on the other side of his former governess. He was idly sucking his thumb, a habit André vaguely remembered from his babyhood. Julie had said it would spoil his mouth and put vinegar on his thumb.

  On his other side, despite the jostling of the wagon, Gabrielle’s head was bent over the open pages of a book. Every time the cart hit a rut, she clutched with one hand at the side of the wagon, never looking up. André put an arm around her shoulders, anchoring her. She shifted, uncomfortable, and he took his arm away again.

  The wagons attracted a fair amount of attention as they traveled through the countryside, but none of the sort André had feared. Adults catcalled, children pointed and sometimes ran after them for a bit. But there was no pounding of hooves behind them, no shouting gendarmes, no cavalcade of soldiers.

  The rain slowed their pace. The mud sucked at the mules’ hooves and tugged at the wheels of the wagons. Jeannette drove hers with the same grim competence with which she plowed through her knitting. Pantaloon, deep in a daydream of his own devising, nearly ran his wagon into a ditch and had to be rescued by Harlequin, Leandro, and de Berry all tugging together. It was a sight for the history books, that one, a prince of the blood putting his back into extracting a battered theatre wagon from a ditch on an unnamed road.

  On the box next to him, Laura didn’t fidget—she wasn’t the fidgeting kind—but he caught her craning her neck, staring down the road behind them.

  “Waiting for the cavalry?” asked André quietly.

  Twitching her shawl, she twisted back into place. He could feel the brush of her skirts against his leg. Even when two of them were children, the bench was small for four. “I’ll feel better once we’re farther along.”

  Some of her hair had escaped its ribbon. Without thinking, André tucked it behind her ear for her. “You mean you’ll feel better once we’re across the Channel.”

  “That too.” Re-tucking the hair he had just tucked, Laura pointed at the road ahead. “Oh, look. They’ve got Pantaloon unstuck. We might actually be able to move another three yards before dark.”

  They camped in the open that night. Cécile broached the decision as a money-saving measure—since some people, she added, with a pointed look at Rose, had been profligate with the group’s funds during their last stay, cutting into the troupe’s meager reserve.

  The others had grumbled, but they had taken it as sense. Laura and André had exchanged a long look, silently giving thanks for Cécile’s acuity. At an inn, there would be other patrons, an innkeeper, witnesses to relay information should Delaroche catch the scent of their trail. It might be cold and damp, but it would be safe.

  The wagons were arranged in a rough circle, creating some small protection from the wind. André set about unhitching and provisioning their mules while Laura woke the sleeping Gabrielle and Pierre-André. Odd that after a day he already thought of them as their mules, just as the wagon was their wagon.

  Freed from the wagon, Gabrielle had gravitated towards Jeannette, hovering awkwardly as Jeannette wrested control of the cook pot from Cécile. Cranky at being woken, Pierre-André was being clingy and whiny, clutching at Laura’s neck. André could hear her speaking in a low, calming tone as she set him down, gently detaching his clutching fingers.

  “. . . firewood,” she was saying. “Leandro is relying on you to help him.”

  “Huh?” said Leandro, glowering at the Duc de Berry, who was helping Rose down from her wagon.

  Even in the gloaming, André could see Laura roll her eyes. “You are relying on Pierre to help you gather firewood? Aren’t you? Leandro!”

  “Oh! Yes. Of course, I am. A big fellow like you, er—”

  “Pierre,” provided Laura. They had agreed it would be safer to drop the André. Pierre was common enough as a name, Pierre-André less so.

  “Pierre, yes,” said Leandro hastily. He clumsily patted Pierre-André on the head. “How do you feel about gathering twigs?”

  Laura crouched down to Pierre-André’s level “It’s an important job, carrying firewood. Do you think you’re up to it?”

  They set out of the clearing together, the gangly Leandro nearly bent double as he held Pierre-André’s hand, Pierre-André assuring his new friend that he planned to gather more twigs than anyone ever. André caught himself smiling as he fastened the feed bag. Modesty wasn’t his son’s strong suit. Next to him, Leandro seemed hardly older, very earnestly explaining the most effective twig-gleaning techniques. André could see his son’s cowlick bobbing up and down in concentrated agreement.

  Hauling the feed sack back into the wagon, André plunked it down next to the cookware, brushing his hands off against his breeches. Maybe, as counterintuitive as it seemed, this would be good for them. All of them together, in the same place, even if that place was a Commedia dell’Arte troupe. After the solitude of the Hôtel de Bac, a bit of companionship might not be a bad thing for Gabrielle and Pierre-André.

  If only Delaroche didn’t come after them.

  Pierre-André returned proudly bearing a pile of sodden twigs, while Leandro staggered under the weight of logs that looked as though they had been cadged, on the sly, from someone’s woodpile. André decided this wasn’t the time to be a stickler about such matters as private property. The rain had stopped but the temperature had dropped with it, leaving everyone both clammy and chilled.

  The fire smoked and hissed, but it was still better than no fire at all. The small crew clustered around, getting as close to the blaze as space allowed, sitting on blankets and cushions taken from the wagons. Judging by the stains on the cushions, they had been used this way before. Jeannette, having established her place as Empress of the Hearth, ladled stew into wooden bowls. Sated, Pierre-André stretched out full-length across André’s and Laura’s laps, his head in Laura’s lap, his feet on André.

  Low laughter came from the cushions on the other side of the fire, where de Berry was recounting a story for the delectation of the delectable Rose. A bawdy one, if the quality of her titters was anything to go by. Leandro moodily whittled a twig into a smaller twig. And next to him . . .

  André poked Laura in the shoulder. “They look like they’re going to come to blows.”

  Jeannette was standing over Daubier, hands on her hips. “—waste of perfectly good food.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “Nonsense,” said Jeannette stridently. “You’ve been traveling all day. You need your strength.”

  Daubier’s face seemed to have collapsed in on itself, all hanging skin where there had once been ruddy flesh. “What for?”

  Jeannette snorted. “What for? I offered you stew, not philosophy. Now eat!”

  “Next she’s going to make him wash behind his ears,” murmured André.

  Laura twisted her head to look at him. Her hair hung loose down her back, gypsy-style. “You’re enjoying this.”

  The heel of one of Pierre-André’s boots was digging into one knee. The opposite thigh had gone to sleep under the weight of one compact four-year-old. The cushion under his backside was damp already, the wet seeping through the bottom of his breeches. André couldn’t remember the last time he had felt this relaxed.

  Clearly, a sign that the strain had driven him mad.

  There was something bizarrely soothing about sitting there in the uncertain light of the campfire, listening to Pantaloon pick out a tune on an instrument that looked like the descendant of a lute, sharing the weight of his son with the woman next to him, his daughter a few feet away, listening with rapt attention as Harlequin entertained her with tales of the Commedia dell’Arte. Now that the wors
t had happened, the anxieties that had gnawed at him since the children had come from Nantes seemed to have drained away, leached out in fatigue and the rough wine the actors had shared with their supper.

  It was a false comfort, he knew. Delaroche was still out there; Daubier’s hand still needed tending; de Berry needed to be seen safely to the border. There were a thousand things that could still go wrong and a month in which they could do so.

  But for now, for this moment in time, as Jeannette clucked over Daubier and Pierre-André permanently crippled his left knee and Laura Griscogne’s shawl tangled on his sleeve, yes, he was content.

  Not enjoying himself, per se, but content.

  “Jeannette never liked me, either,” he said blandly, deflecting the question. “It’s nice to see her go after someone else for a change.”

  Gabrielle had elected to sit on her own cushion, her knees drawn up to her chest as she listened earnestly to Harlequin’s tales of the misadventures of the Commedia dell’Aruzzio.

  Catching André’s eye over Gabrielle’s head, Harlequin winked. “Surely, your father must have stories of his own,” he said jovially, loud enough to be heard by the group. “We can’t be the only ones to have fallen afoul of the muses.”

  André leaned back, resting his weight on the palms of his hands. “Which story do you want?”

  Laura put a wifely hand on his arm. “Oh no. Once you get started . . . It’s late and the children should be in bed.”

  Gabrielle gave Laura a look of death, not appreciating the reminder either of her youth or the lateness of the hour.

  Struggling to his feet, Harlequin held out a hand to Gabrielle, sweeping her up. “Mademoiselle Malcontre,” he said grandly. “I trust you shall favor me again with your company tomorrow.”

  His performance was such an obvious parody of de Berry’s that the others were hard put to repress their smiles. Gabrielle, however, ducked her head and bobbed a curtsy, taking the compliment very much at face value.

  It all made André very glad that she was nine rather than nineteen.

  Like a bird of prey, Jeannette descended upon them to sweep up Pierre-André, bearing him triumphantly forth as though he were her own personal prize. One by one, the others rose too, Harlequin taking the precaution of extinguishing the fire. Lanterns burned on their hooks on the sides of the wagon, casting a dim illumination over the clearing, by which the actors found their way to their own lodgings.