The Orchid Affair Page 38

  The note was short and to the point.

  I have your son and his nurse. I am willing to make an exchange.

  I will release the boy and the maid in exchange for your surrender and that of the Bourbon traitor you have been harboring. I expect you both at the Cauchemar by midnight. You will find the boat in the fifth dock from the left.

  After midnight, such lenient terms will no longer apply.

  Gaston Delaroche, Assistant to the Minister of Police

  Laura found her voice first. “Do you think he really has them? He might be bluffing.”

  André wished he could share her optimism. Gaston Delaroche might be many things, but unprepared wasn’t one of them. “He has them.”

  “He’s mad,” said Laura.

  “I know he’s mad,” said André. “Fetch de Berry.”

  “You’re not giving yourself up!”

  “What else do you expect me to do?” Yanking off his false eyebrows with little concern for the real ones beneath, André relented. “I’m not going to give up without a fight. But if it comes down to it, yes, I’ll surrender myself for Pierre-André.”

  “I have an idea.” Laura’s hands were balled into fists, the knuckles white. Her entire body vibrated with tension. “We take de Berry and Daubier to the Bien-Aimée as planned. We’ll be able to get help there.”

  “From the sailors?” The crews of smuggling ships generally pursued a policy of not getting involved. Not unless it involved profit.

  For a moment, Laura looked as though she intended to say something, but whatever it was, she thought better of it. “Yes,” she said circumspectly. “From the ship’s crew. I know at least one of them has a personal grudge against Monsieur Delaroche. They will help us.”

  There was something she wasn’t telling him, but André didn’t have the time to suss it out. “And what if Delaroche retaliates against Pierre-André?”

  “Do you really think, if you followed his instructions, that he would keep his word?”

  It didn’t help, hearing his own fears put into words. He knew she was right. But he still didn’t want to hear it.

  André dropped his wig on the floor. His head felt oddly naked without it. “Once again, it seems I have little choice but to trust you.”

  Laura bit her lip. It wasn’t the first time. The bright red paint that coated her mouth was half-eaten off already. “I haven’t led you astray so far, have I?”

  “No.” The one word took more of an effort than it should have. “Let’s go deposit de Berry at your ship. And then I’m going to carve Gaston Delaroche into kindling.”

  “Gaston Delaroche?” Daubier was holding a rolled-up scroll under one arm, a piece of scenery waiting to be deployed. “What about him?”

  Laura looked to André before answering. “He has Pierre-André. And Jeannette.”

  Antoine Daubier, the urbane man who never got involved, lifted his deformed right hand. “Then what are we waiting for? Monsieur Delaroche and I have a score to settle.”

  At that moment, André wouldn’t have been in Delaroche’s shoes for all the world.

  It took little more than a moment to drag de Berry from his comfortable perch on the other side of the wings. Cécile had taken the precaution of keeping de Berry’s role small. So small, in fact, that it was practically non-existent. He walked on and walked off again at some point during the third act. That point varied based on whether he remembered or not.

  They were aided in their efforts by the fact that Rose was onstage.

  “Come along,” said Daubier, moving with more energy than André had seen in months. “We’re going.”

  “I have plans for the evening,” de Berry protested. “Very pleasant ones too.”

  “We have a ship waiting to take you to England,” André said tersely.

  De Berry threw Rose to the wind without a second thought. “Why didn’t you say so? Where is it?”

  It wasn’t actually as stupid a question as it might have seemed. It was more than conceivable that their conveyance might have been hidden in an inlet, somewhere away from the main waterways.

  “In the harbor,” said Laura. “With the other ships. Please, Your Highness, do hurry. We have a bit of a situation. . . .”

  The hack was waiting, as Laura had promised. The five of them squeezed into the interior, Gabrielle on André’s lap.

  André checked his pocket watch. He had discarded his padding along the way, and his doublet hung in loose folds. “Half an hour since Delaroche gave Gabrielle the note. How long do you think it’s been since he took them?”

  Unsurprisingly, it was Laura who answered. “They were both still there until just before the curtain went up. Delaroche must have smuggled them out, left them in a carriage, come back, and given Gabrielle the note.”

  “You mean they were right outside while we were wasting time debating?”

  “We don’t know that,” she countered. “It’s only a guess. And knowing Monsieur Delaroche, I imagine he came well armed and well guarded. We’ll do better to surprise him with reinforcements. He should,” she added thoughtfully, “be very, very surprised.”

  “Who are these reinforcements of yours?” André asked suspiciously.

  “She means me, of course,” said de Berry, stretching. “I’ll be glad to do what I can for the little lad. Within reason, of course.”

  It wasn’t personal, his tone implied. It was just that royal skin was worth more.

  “You will get him back, won’t you?” said Gabrielle to her father. Her brows drew together just the way his did when he was worried. From the way she was squinting, he suspected she would soon need spectacles.

  “Yes,” he said, with more assurance than he felt.

  “I didn’t really want him gone,” Gabrielle said in a small voice. “Not really.”

  “No one thought you did,” said Laura bracingly. “It’s just the sort of thing one says. Little brothers can be very trying. I know. I’ve taught many of them.”

  “I just hope he’s trying Delaroche,” André murmured.

  “We’re almost there,” said Laura. “Look. The Bien-Aimée.”

  She pointed to a ship, which to André looked entirely indistinguishable from the ones on either side of it. He had put his spectacles back on, but it was too far and too dark to properly read the lettering.

  “Have you been on it before?” he asked.

  Laura’s lips pressed together in a way he hadn’t seen for a very long time. It was her governess look, all prunes and prisms and unsweetened lemons.

  “Yes,” she said.

  Her references had claimed she had been with a family in the interior. What had she to do with a yacht sailing the Channel ports?

  “When?”

  Like a barometer, sensing tension in the atmosphere, Gabrielle looked from one to the other.

  Laura didn’t look at him. “We seem to be stopping,” she said. “Gabrielle, mind your footing getting out. It’s a long way down.”

  Why in the hell wouldn’t she meet his eye? Who were these people who were to help them? It shouldn’t matter, André told himself. As long as they got Pierre-André back.

  But it did matter.

  “Who are these people?” he asked in an undertone as he lifted his daughter to the ground and joined Laura on the pier. “Why won’t you look at me?”

  “They’re English,” she said brusquely, in the tone of one making the best of a bad situation. “Cécile made the arrangements, not I.”

  “But you made the arrangements with Cécile.”

  Laura made a wafting motion with her hand. She still wouldn’t meet his eye. “They’ll help you rescue Pierre-André. Isn’t that the important thing?”

  “We don’t know that yet.”

  She looked at him then. Her lips twisted in another expression he hadn’t seen for quite some time. The bitter smile of someone who knows the joke is on her. “Trust me. They will.”

  Quickening her pace, she stepped ahead of him. A man h
ad jumped down to greet them. She said a few words to him in rapid English. She spoke softly, but André could hear enough to tell that her English was swift and fluent and entirely unaccented.

  She had said she was fluent in English. In English and Italian and German and Latin and the devil only remembered what else.

  So why did he feel so sick to his stomach all of a sudden, with fears he couldn’t name?

  Whatever she had said did the trick. She beckoned to them to follow her onto the ship. A gangplank was lowered for them. André hung back, taking Gabrielle’s hand to help her up the steep slope. That was what he told himself, in any event. Some other force was at play. Something felt off about the situation.

  A trap? But why? He had long ago discarded any apprehension of Laura’s being in league with Delaroche. The guard had spoken English; she had spoken English to him. It would be deceit of elaborate proportions for Delaroche to have arranged a kidnapping only to have his own lover bring him aboard by false pretenses.

  True it might be that women had given their bodies before and lied all the same, but he couldn’t believe it of her, not of Laura.

  But, something—something was off. His instincts didn’t lie.

  Holding Gabrielle’s hand, he stepped onto the deck just in time to hear the end of an introduction taking place.

  “—who will be conducting you safely back to England,” Laura was saying, gesturing from de Berry to a man who stood just beyond, his back to André.

  “Delighted,” said de Berry. “Charmed to make your acquaintance. I’ve heard a great deal of you.”

  “I am equally charmed to have you on board, Your Highness.”

  The second man’s voice sounded familiar, although André couldn’t quite place it. He had a faint memory of that same voice, but speaking in French.

  They were all speaking English. André’s English was rusty, but it was good enough to get the gist.

  “We’re quite relieved to see you safely off French soil, Your Highness,” the unknown man was saying. Turning to Laura, he gave her a brief salute. “Well done, Miss Grey! An excellent first mission.”

  André stopped trying to place the voice. There were other more pressing matters.

  “Miss Grey?” he demanded. “Mission?”

  “I can explain,” said Laura.

  As soon as she said it, she wished she hadn’t. When one had to promise that one could explain, it generally meant one couldn’t.

  “Later,” she added.

  After all, there was the pressing matter of rescuing Pierre-André. It wasn’t that she was trying to wiggle out of making explanations she didn’t have.

  “I look forward to it. Miss Grey.” The look André gave Laura cut right through her. His eyes narrowed on the man behind her. “Selwick?”

  They knew each other?

  Lord Richard Selwick held out his hand with an expression of genuine pleasure. “Jaouen! I heard you were involved in this business.”

  As Laura watched, completely speechless with shock, the two men wrung each other’s hands. “I haven’t seen you since aught-two,” said André. “I’d heard you retired.”

  “I’ve been on honeymoon,” said the Purple Gentian blandly, dodging the question. “You switched sides.”

  André didn’t look at Laura. “Say more that I was forced to play a hand I had hoped to keep secret.”

  “In other words,” said Daubier, stepping forward, “our conspiracy was discovered. It was,” he added, “through my carelessness.”

  Laura looked at Daubier with surprise. It was the first time she had heard him say such a thing. Recovering herself, she gestured from Daubier to Lord Richard. “Lord Richard, this is Monsieur Antoine Daubier, the painter. And that young lady over there is Mademoiselle Gabrielle Jaouen.”

  “Mademoiselle.” Lord Richard bowed with debonair flair.

  Laura automatically turned towards André to share a smile and encountered nothing but stone. That’s right. They weren’t on smiling terms anymore.

  “We are forced to throw ourselves on your mercy,” said Jaouen to Lord Richard. “In fact—”

  “Fair enough,” said Lord Richard convivially. “I’m glad to have you on board. In both senses. And you, Miss Grey. Well done!”

  Laura brushed aside the praise. “We have a problem,” she said brusquely. “Monsieur Delaroche has Monsieur Jaouen’s son.” It felt strange referring to André by his last name, but stranger to call him by his first. She was Miss Grey again—English operative, governess, spinster. The woman who had curled up naked next to André Jaouen didn’t exist anymore. The woman he had thought he loved was a lie. “He wants the duke in exchange.”

  “And your blood, no doubt,” Lord Richard said soberly, turning to André. “How long ago did he take him?”

  “Roughly an hour ago. His nursemaid is with him. Will you help us?” asked Laura.

  “It will be my pleasure,” said Lord Richard, without mockery. “No man should make war on children.”

  A powerful emotion passed across André’s face. “I’m in your debt, Selwick.”

  The former Purple Gentian was instantly all action. “Don’t start tallying the IOU until we get him out. Where is he being held?”

  “Delaroche has him on a boat called the Cauchemar,” Laura jumped in. “Here in the harbor.”

  There was a glint in the former Purple Gentian’s eye that boded ill for Gaston Delaroche. “What do you say we give Monsieur Delaroche a little surprise?”

  Chapter 32

  Gaston Delaroche never did anything by halves.

  André identified the Cauchemar long before they reached it. It wasn’t just the tricolore flying from the mast or the uniformed guards standing sentinel on the pier or even the large, curling black script proclaiming the boat’s name. It was the size of the ship—double the size of the Bien-Aimée—and the fact that it was hung with lanterns, every single one ablaze.

  The crews of the boats docked to either side must have just loved that.

  Sarcasm kept André’s palms from sweating; sarcasm kept him from imagining what horrors Delaroche had in store for Pierre-André; sarcasm gave him the presence of mind to pretend to stay reasonably calm and nod in the right places when Lord Richard Selwick spoke to him.

  He had never thought he would one day make common cause with the Purple Gentian. They had been adversaries not so very long ago. Courteous adversaries. If anything, André had owed the man a debt of gratitude—not just for the amusement value of some of his exploits, but for distracting Delaroche. Whether the Purple Gentian knew it or not, he had unintentionally facilitated more than one objective for the Comte d’Artois, simply by keeping Delaroche occupied elsewhere. False information had been passed, networks of informers assembled, plots plotted, all while Delaroche was busy chasing the shadow of a cheeky purple flower.

  What was it they said? The enemy of my enemy is my friend. André had cause tonight to be grateful for that old adage. If the Purple Gentian helped him retrieve his son, he wouldn’t have another thing to say about gentleman adventurers and unpronounceable essays in botany.

  There were five of them in the dinghy.

  His Royal Highness, Charles Ferdinand d’Artois, Duc de Berry, was not one of the party. De Berry had offered to come, but without marked enthusiasm. He had been more than happy to be persuaded to stay behind to guard the women and children.

  De Berry might not have been so sanguine had he known André’s real reasoning. De Berry was their bargaining chip, the only genuine leverage André possessed. Delaroche might want to wreak his revenge on André, but when it came down to it, a prince of the blood was a prize not to be missed—at least, not if one didn’t want to risk Fouché’s extreme disapprobation. No one wanted to risk the disapprobation of Fouché.

  When it came down to it, if he had to, André would trade the prince for his son.

  He hadn’t told de Berry that, of course. It was a last resort.

  Daubier, unlike de Berry, had flatly
refused to be left behind. “I have a grudge to settle,” he had said, displaying his hand to Lord Richard.

  No one had argued with him.

  André, Daubier, and Lord Richard had been joined in the dinghy by two of Lord Richard’s crew—one of whom appeared to be somewhat inexplicably dressed as a pirate, complete with a stuffed parrot on one shoulder. The parrot was held in place by an ingenious mechanism of straps, although it did list a bit to one side as the man rowed. It made André feel a great deal less conspicuous in the sagging remains of his Il Capitano costume.

  There had been room for one more in the boat, a place that Laura had tried to claim as her own. She had desisted when Lord Richard had pointed out, apologetically, that her combat training was fairly rudimentary.

  Combat training?

  Who in the hell was this Laura? Not Laura, André reminded himself. Miss Grey. Miss Grey, who somehow knew the Purple Gentian—not only knew him, but was on terms of some intimacy.

  She still looked the same, still dressed in her Ruffiana costume, the skirts kilted up so they wouldn’t trail, her hair scraped back so tightly that it made her eyes slant up at the corners. She had the same little curls at the nape of her neck, the same beauty mark at the corner of one eyebrow, the same eyes, the same nose, the same hands, the same lips that he had kissed again and again, and which, it seemed, had returned to him not just kisses, but kisses and lies.

  André wondered just how much had been a lie.

  Not that it mattered, André reminded himself, as the dinghy drew towards the brightly lit Cauchemar. It couldn’t be allowed to matter, not even if his guts felt like they had been wrenched out and used for garters. All that mattered was that they save Pierre-André.

  “Right-ho,” Lord Richard said, speaking in a voice just barely audible above the sound of the boats rocking in the water. The wind had risen, and waves were slapping against the keels of the boats moored in the harbor. “Here’s the plan. I’ve sent two men along the pier. In precisely ten minutes”—Lord Richard consulted his pocket watch—“they will cut the ropes mooring the Cauchemar.”