The Orchid Affair

Chapter 30

“Only a few hours left to go,” said Laura, fastening the tie of her ruff behind her neck. Her fingers fumbled on the familiar strings.

Turning her around, André took over the task for her. “Nervous?” he asked.

Laura tried to shoot him a sarcastic look but was stymied by several layers of starched fabric. “I can’t imagine why I would be,” she said acerbically.

After a month and half on the road, they were backstage in the theatre at Dieppe, preparing to go on for what would be, with any luck, their final performance with the Commedia dell’Aruzzio.

Laura would never be an inspired actress, but she had, over the past month, become a reasonably competent one. The stage no longer held the same terror for her. Their flight from France, however, was a different matter entirely. True, they had made it this far, but there was still the boat to England to be dealt with.

Of what would happen when they arrived in England, Laura tried not to think.

So far, their haphazard escape had gone almost unnervingly well. After Beauvais, they had taken again to the back roads for a week (Laura could only assume Cécile had seen the same notices she and André had seen) before venturing again into towns large and small for a performance here and a performance there, seldom staying in any place longer than two nights at a time. They had fallen into a pattern of sorts. In the mornings, she gave lessons to Gabrielle and Pierre-André. In the evenings, they rehearsed or performed, depending on their situation. And at night, she and André retired to the privacy of their wagon.

March dripped away into April. The grass began to look more green than gray, and the first of the wildflowers took advantage of the thaw to stake their claims on the fields and roadsides. There were no more notices on the town hall wall, no signs of pursuit. Laura wasn’t naïve enough to hope that the First Consul’s agents had given up the chase, but if they were chasing, they were being remarkably laggardly about it.

Apparently, they had bigger fish to fry. In April, word reached them from Paris that Cadoudal had been caught in the second week of March. He had fought to the last, battling his way through the streets until he was overcome and taken into custody. Rivaling the news of Cadoudal’s arrest was that of the arrest and trial of General Moreau, accused of conspiring with Artois to turn coat and place a Bourbon on the throne. André had gone grim when he heard the news about Cadoudal and Moreau, but Laura had been quietly thankful. Compared to Artois’s chief lieutenant and a general turned traitor, the escaped former assistant to the Prefect of Police and a maimed painter were distinctly unexciting.

André squeezed her shoulders. “All set?”

He was already in his Il Capitano costume, sporting a doublet padded out in front and at the shoulders to provide a comical aspect, with a half-cape slung from one shoulder in the style of a century before. On his head he wore an extravagantly curled black wig, crowned by a broad-brimmed feathered hat of the style commonly associated with Louis XIII’s musketeers.

A bushy black mustache adorned his upper lip. It wiggled as he spoke. Laura hoped they had remembered to put on enough glue.

Laura squinted at André’s upper lip. “Does your mustache feel loose to you? It looks loose.”

She touched two fingers to it, pressing it into place.

André caught her hand by the wrist, pressing a kiss against the palm before letting go. He had removed his spectacles for the performance—the blustering braggart of a Captain would never allow himself to be seen in spectacles—but even without them, he saw far too much.

“It will all be all right,” he said, knowing, without having to be told, that it wasn’t really his mustache that was worrying her. “Don’t fret. We’re too close to fail now.”

Laura cast a glance over her shoulder. She didn’t hold with superstition, but if there were such things as premonitions, she was having one. She could feel it trickling like cold water down her spine.

“Don’t tempt Fate,” she warned. “It wouldn’t do to get cocky.”

André grinned, making the mustache slant dangerously to one side. “That’s not what you said last night.”

“See! I told you it was loose.” Laura pushed down hard on his mustache.

André seized the opportunity to slide an arm around her waist and press a kiss against her neck—or what he could reach of it, since the high ruff of her costume made most of her unreachable. The padded belly of his doublet bumped against her stomacher.

Laura squirmed. The mustache tickled.

“Not exactly conducive to romance, is it?” André said ruefully.

Laura quickly scanned the wings. For now, they were alone in the hallway. Rose would be finishing her makeup (or de Berry), Harlequin would be joking with Leandro, Pantaloon would be nervously counting the number of people in the audience, Daubier would be supervising the scenery, Gabrielle would be taking tickets, Jeannette and Pierre-André would be sorting props, and Cécile would be wherever the troupe most needed her to be.

They had kept to their resolution to keep their liaison quiet, to pretend to be lovers pretending not to be lovers, which meant that they had plenty of opportunity for consummation—pretending to be married did have its benefits—but a constant struggle to remember to refrain from being too affectionate in front of the three people who might find it suspect: Jeannette, Daubier, and Gabrielle.

It was the little, everyday moments that nearly gave them away. It was next to impossible to remember not to touch each other. There would be times when André would be looking down at her, his lips going on about something perfectly mundane, his eyes saying something else entirely, and she would almost lean up and kiss him, without thinking, just because. Or, at the fireside, when he would forget himself and kiss the top of her head or play with her hands or any of a number of touches that would be too innocuous to notice if only they were what they claimed to be.

Laura had seen Jeannette looking at them suspiciously a time or two and hoped the old nursemaid would ascribe their intimacy to dedicated acting.

Laura patted André’s padded stomach. “No wonder Il Capitano has had so little luck with Inamorata.”

André’s fingers found the gap beneath her bodice and her stomacher. “It’s not Inamorata the Captain is interested in.”

“Don’t say that too loudly. It would ruin the plot if Il Capitano ran off with Ruffiana.”

“I don’t see why.” The ends of his mustache tickled her ear. “It might do them good to get a bit of a happy ending for a change.”

Laura turned to press a kiss to the corner of André’s mouth, navigating around the mustache. “They’re not the sort of characters who get happy endings.”

André raised the Captain’s bushy brows. Under the stage paint, he looked surprisingly young and boyish. “That doesn’t seem quite fair.”

Laura felt something squeeze in her chest, something that wasn’t supposed to be there. This wasn’t part of their arrangement, this fondness.

Why not call a spade a spade? Not fondness, love. That ridiculous, inconvenient emotion her father had immortalized in marble and her mother in print. She had told herself she was proof against it, bolstered by example. But she wasn’t.

She looked at André’s face, so familiar under even the horsehair and greasepaint, and felt a surge of tenderness for this clever, naïve man, who still, for all his reversals, thought in terms of fairness and the basic equality of man. Didn’t he know that life wasn’t fair? There was something incredibly endearing about it and, at the same time, terrifying. She wanted to lock him in a box and protect him from the world.

Protect him from the world? Laura shook herself back to reality. This was the former assistant to the Prefect of Police she was talking about. He was perfectly capable of taking care of himself.

After tonight, he would have to. There had been no discussion of what would happen when they arrived in England. She could only assume that they would go, as originally planned, their separate ways.

There were times when she had teased herself with the possibility that it might be otherwise. But it had been easier to push thoughts of the future aside and enjoy the moment, pretending they were the married couple they claimed. It had been all too easy to forget that it was a pretense, and that it must, like all pretenses, come to an end.

Now with the moment upon them, Laura found it impossible to make herself broach any of this. It went against the unspoken code of their arrangement.

Instead, she said mildly, “Pantaloon would have heart failure if you changed the script on him.”

“Pantaloon has heart failure every time we go on the stage.” Releasing her, André stepped back and pressed a quick kiss to her brow. “All right, I’ll behave. When are we to be at the ship?”

“Ten o’clock,” said Laura.

André grinned at her, in high spirits. He seemed, perversely, younger the longer they were on the road, more relaxed than he had been in Paris. Laura thought, from time to time, she caught glimpses of the young man who had sat beneath the tree in Julie Beniet’s garden.

Julie Beniet’s garden, not hers.

“Not midnight?” André said. “I thought it was always midnight.”

“Not when the performance begins at six.”

They would be done with the play by nine or a little bit after. The sooner they left the theatre for the boat, the better. Laura had given instructions to Jeannette to pack the children’s things and Daubier’s. By mutual consent, neither of them had alerted Daubier or de Berry. Daubier was learning to use his left hand where he had once relied on his right, but his temper was still uncertain. It wasn’t that he would betray them, but Laura worried that he might, if given notice, absent himself from the group, choosing to stay in France and court discovery rather than seek a new life in England. He would, she knew, be lionized by those who cared for the arts if only she could get him to England.

As for de Berry, despite his protests that his sense of self-preservation outweighed his libido, they didn’t trust him not to let the plan slip to his current inamorata. Whatever else Rose might be, she was still the sometime mistress of Joachim Murat, brother-in-law to the First Consul.

Besides, Laura thought callously, de Berry didn’t need to pack. He would have clothing enough waiting for him in England. His costumes would have been discarded anyway, unless he meant to keep them as souvenirs of a coup that had failed.

Everything was in readiness. The Bien-Aimée would be waiting for them at ten. Jeannette might be grumpy, but she was efficient and unquestionably loyal. So why did she feel so twitchy?

Laura surveyed the audience, thinner now than it had been on the first three nights, but still reasonably full. In a month, the Commedia dell’Aruzzio would have competition from other traveling troupes, but for now, they were the only new game in town.

There was a man moving down the aisle, clad entirely in rusty black. There was something about him that looked very familiar, and not in a good way.

Laura squinted, leaning perilously close to the edge of the curtain. “Isn’t that—”

“What?” André asked, hauling her back by the stiffened peplum of her dress.

Laura shook her head. “Nothing. I’m seeing shadows, that’s all.” Settling her very unattractive cap more firmly on her head, she made a face. “For a moment, I thought I saw Monsieur Delaroche.”

Il Capitano’s eyebrows engaged in gymnastics that challenged the strength of their glue. “Delaroche? Here?”

“He was—” Laura started to point and stopped. Where the Delaroche doppelganger had been a moment before she could see only a group of rowdy apprentices, tossing roasted nuts at one another. “I really am losing my mind.”

André took her face between his hands and pressed a quick, hard kiss to her lips. “You just need to hold on to it for a few hours more and then we’ll be safely on that boat to England.”

“England,” echoed Laura. “We should be there by tomorrow, weather willing.”

Off the boat tomorrow and then what? Back to Selwick Hall for her, she supposed, to see if the Pink Carnation had any further assignments for her now that she was effectively banned from Paris.

She did speak fluent Italian. Perhaps, Laura thought, with an effort at enthusiasm, the Carnation might send her to Italy next time. She hadn’t been to Italy since that last trip to Como.

Or she could tell André the truth.

And then what? she asked herself. She couldn’t make him love her just by wishing it so.

André touched his fingers to her wrist. “About England . . . ,” he began.

Laura felt a tightness in her chest that had nothing to do with the lacing of her stomacher. “A small island off the coast of France?”

“Yes, that one.” André’s fingers absently traced the pattern of her laces.

She would miss this, Laura thought with sudden clarity. She would miss this ease of touch, this lease they had on each other’s bodies. It was like a gleaner’s easement, free rein to roam within the prescribed areas during the course of the arrangement.

André plucked at a string. “We haven’t really discussed . . .”

“Beginners, on!” shouted Cécile from somewhere in the wings.

André grimaced. “That would be me.” He looked at her, hesitated, then shook his head. “We’ll talk after.”

After? After they would be managing de Berry, shepherding the children, running for the boat. Their chances of privacy were nil.

“What is it? Just spit it out. Quickly,” Laura added. “Before Cécile gets agitated.”

Cécile never got agitated, but the words seemed to have the correct effect.

André scratched his head, making his wig list to one side. “Once we get to England . . . I’ll be starting over. I won’t have much to offer. There’ll be no Hôtel de Bac. It will likely be hired lodgings at first, while I try to find work of some sort.”

Laura’s fingers itched to re-center his wig, but at the moment that was rather beside the point. Those little domestic gestures would soon be a thing of the past. If he was trying to say what she thought he was trying to say.

He was giving her the sack, wasn’t he? Both as governess and as lover.

“What are you trying to tell me?” she asked flatly. “If this is your way of telling me that we’ll be going our separate ways . . .”

Then what? She found she couldn’t herself finish the sentence. The flippant words jammed together at the back of her throat.

“No!” André said hastily. The wig wobbled. André made a wry face. “Forgive me. I’m out of practice at this whole wooing thing.”

Wooing. Wooing?

“I feel like a besotted fool,” he muttered. “Hell, I am a besotted fool.”

André grasped her hands in his. “I’d get down on one knee, but it seems redundant at this point—and this blasted belly would get in the way.”

“Beginners!” called Cécile.

André didn’t turn around. Holding fast to Laura’s hands, he said urgently, “We’ve done everything all upside down. All I’m trying to say is . . . I don’t want to lose you when we get to England.”

In his brightly colored doublet, the extravagant black wig perched askew on his head, and his mustache wiggling with every word, he had never looked more ridiculous. There were bright spots of rouge on his cheeks and fake hair on his eyebrows and his boots had bells on them.

“What we have,” he said. “It means too much. I never thought—but now that we are—oh, hell. I’m making a mess of it.”

“Emotions are messy, she agreed. Her hands tightened convulsively on his. From a long way away, she heard her own voice saying, in a tone like gravel, “You won’t lose me unless you want to.”

Heedless of the rouge on his cheeks, she reached up both hands to cup his cheeks and pulled his mouth down to hers. André didn’t need to be asked twice. His arms clasped around her with a force that knocked the breath right out of her—although that was partly the doing of Il Capitano’s fake stomach, which whacked into her stomacher with enough force to leave a permanent dent.

Laura didn’t care. Breathing was highly overrated. Her ruff was squished, her greasepaint was smeared, her cap was askew, and she couldn’t have cared less.

All her carefully constructed armor seemed to have deserted her. Laura knew it was folly—not the grand, magnificent folly of her parents’ affairs, but folly all the same—but she couldn’t seem to help herself.

As André had said, why shouldn’t Ruffiana have a bit of a happy ending too?

If Cécile was still calling for beginners, Laura didn’t hear her. But she did notice when André abruptly let go.

“Wha—,” Laura started to say, but broke off when she saw what had arrested André’s attention.

“Gabrielle . . . ,” he began.

Gabrielle’s eyes were round as saucers. Very, very unhappy saucers. She was staring at her father and her former governess with the sort of expression usually reserved for mass executions and invading Viking hordes.

“Cécile sent me to fetch you,” she said in a very small voice. There was a distinctly accusing tone to the words.

Laura took a hasty step back, straightening her stomacher. “Gabrielle,” she said. “It’s not what you—”

She broke off. If there was one thing she demanded of her charges, it was honesty. And what could she say? It was exactly what Gabrielle thought. And probably worse.

Gabrielle backed away, as one might from a house marked with the plague. She cast Laura an accusing look. “Don’t talk to me. I don’t want to talk to you again. Ever.”

André recovered his voice first. “Sweetheart—”

Gabrielle didn’t wait to hear what he had to say. Turning on her heel, she blundered away, knocking into a bit of scaffolding before recovering herself and disappearing in the direction of the front of the house, moving awkwardly, as though she were still reeling from a blow.

“Gabrielle!” Laura started after her.

André caught at her arm. “Gabrielle was going to have to know sooner or later,” he said in a low voice. “I’ll talk to her after the performance. I’ll explain . . . something.”

“Beginners! Capitano, that means you! Not next week. Now.” Cécile might not be agitated, but she certainly sounded miffed.

“She’ll come to terms with it,” André said. He pressed a quick kiss to her head. “We’ll all make it work. You’ll see.”

Laura watched as André hurried off onto the stage, the feather on his hat wagging.

The audience greeted Il Capitano’s appearance with an anticipatory roar of laughter and a smattering of rude comments, which Il Capitano, in character, returned with interest, in the heavy, pseudo-Spanish accent required by the role.

Gabrielle had run off towards the front of the house, where the holders of the lower-priced tickets milled together in the pit. Laura positioned herself on the side of the stage, looking for the little girl in her plain brown dress. There were no women allowed in the parterre—at least, not officially—so that meant that if Gabrielle were there, she would stand out.

There was no sign of her in the pit. Blast.

Laura devoutly hoped that Gabrielle had chosen to nurse her wounded feelings somewhere within the theater. Dieppe was a port town, with all the dangers that implied. A young girl alone on the streets might encounter any number of perils, the likes of which Gabrielle had no inkling. God willing, she never would.

Thank goodness. There she was, taking her appointed place at the ticket table at the front of the theatre.

That’s my girl, thought Laura with a surge of approval and relief.

They might not adore each other, but Laura felt an odd sense of kinship. She understood what it was to be prickly and stubborn. Good girl, not running off and hiding. There was nothing like going on just as usual to kick your adversaries in the teeth. It might be Laura’s teeth being kicked, but she was proud of Gabrielle just the same.

The play was well under way now, Il Capitano making his play for the fair Inamorata while Leandro conspired with the maid, Columbine, to press his own suit for the young lady’s hand. The audience seemed to be enjoying it well enough, laughing in all the right places. They were laughing and shouting, calling back quips to the actors on the stage, tossing the odd apple. One man wasn’t doing anything of the kind. He was staring at the stage, his gaze fixed on one actor alone: André.

There was no mistaking him this time. That was Gaston Delaroche. In their audience. In Dieppe.

It was too much to hope that he was there on holiday.

“Ruffiana!” Cécile was calling her.

Laura hurried onstage, trusting to the familiarity of thirty-odd days’ worth of performance to see her through.

“What ho, lackey!” she called out. The Commedia dell’Aruzzio didn’t demand veracity of dialogue from its practitioners. They spoke a sort of theatrical pidgin, designed to sound vaguely archaic, with modern colloquialisms for humor. “You, over there!”

Harlequin struck an exaggerated pose of surprise. “Me, mistress?”

He sidled sideways, mugging for the audience, sending them into anticipatory waves of laughter.

“Yes, you,” said Laura. She could see Delaroche’s tall-crowned hat making its way through the crowd, heading towards the exit. Where was he going? For the gendarmes? If they all fled now . . . “I have a commission for you, saucy youth.”

“A commission? For me?” Harlequin’s flexible face betrayed suitable shades of anticipatory horror. “What sort of commission?”

He made a bawdy joke out of it. The audience loved it. Laura felt her skin go clammy beneath the heavy fabric of her costume. Delaroche wasn’t heading for the exit.

He was heading for Gabrielle.