The Orchid Affair (38 page)

But when it came down to it, she’d rather fight for the covers with André than be queen of her own bed without him. It might occasionally be difficult, but it would never be boring.

There was just one thing. Laura drew a deep breath. “I’m not Julie.”

André looked at her in confusion. “Pardon?”

“Julie,” Laura repeated. It came out somewhat more acidly than she had intended. “The love of your life. I can’t simply step into her place and fill her spot in your life. I’m not Julie. I couldn’t be if I tried.”

André let out his breath in a tired sigh. “I wouldn’t want you to be. Julie was the love of my youth. We were both very young. We hadn’t become the people we are yet.” He paused, frowning, as though trying to decide how much to say. “It was … different. But you …”

“Yes?” Laura prompted.

André shook his head, acknowledging defeat. “It’s different. You’re different.”

For an articulate man, he wasn’t doing particularly well. “I did rather get that,” said Laura. “It’s different. But is it love?”

André rested his hands on her shoulders, giving the question earnest thought. “I want to go to bed with you every night and wake up with you every morning,” he said. “I rely on your advice, even when I don’t always agree with it. I wonder what you’ll say about things, how you’ll react to people, what your opinion will be. You’ve become part of my landscape. A large and important part,” he clarified. “Not just a tuft of grass or the odd tree stump. You’re more like a river.”

“A river,” repeated Laura.

“Necessary for life to exist. How’s that for declarations for you?” André grinned suddenly. “And then there are all the other bits.”

“The other bits?”

“The curve of your hip, the line of your jaw, the way your hair curls on the nape of your neck.” His finger traced the fall of her hair down her neck, making her shiver. He drew back, raising a brow. “And I will admit, I am rather partial to your bosom.”

“Just rather partial?”

“Extremely infatuated?” Sobering, André looked down at her, his eyes intent on hers. “So there you are. Take it as you will. Is that love?”

“It will do,” said Laura, and found she was smiling at him despite herself, smiling so hard she was dizzy with it. “It will do very well.”

When they could speak again, André looked quizzically at her. “Simply for the sake of equity … Do you love me?”

“Well enough to spare you flowery speeches.” Laura smiled at him—a slow, seductive smile with more than a little bit of Suzette in it. “Shall I show you instead?”

“By all means.” André’s eyes were very, very bright as he leaned toward her.

“André, my boy!” boomed a baritone voice.

André cursed. Laura bumped her head on his chin. Clumsily disentangling themselves, they turned to face Daubier, who was regarding them with arms folded and both eyebrows raised.

“And Laura! What would your parents say?”

Now, that was an inapposite question if ever she had heard one. Knowing her parents …

“‘What took you so long?’” she suggested.

André chuckled. She could feel the gust of his laughter against her hair. She leaned against him, contemplating how nice it was not to have to pretend. They weren’t pretending anymore, were they? It was odd and rather wonderful.

Daubier was never one to allow a grand scene to be spoiled by reality. It was seldom he got to play the angry parent.

“André, my boy, am I going to have to force Laura to make an honest man of you?” Daubier considered for a moment. “I’ve got that wrong way around, haven’t I?”

“No,” said André dryly, “I’d say that’s just about right.” He looked down at Laura. “Will you?”

“Only if the children agree,” said Laura, only half jokingly. “I refuse to be a wicked stepmother. It’s such a cliché.”

“Pierre-André won’t be a problem. He’s been calling you
Maman
for a month,” André pointed out, sliding an arm around her waist. “As long as you don’t interfere with his ambition to own a parrot, he’ll give you no trouble at all.”

“What about Gabrielle?”

He didn’t brush her off with platitudes. Laura loved him for that. Well, she loved him anyway, but that was one of the reasons why. He thought about it before answering, giving the problem the same consideration he would any other.

“You’re good for her,” André said eventually. “Jeannette has always preferred Pierre-André. I love her, but I don’t know what to do with her.”

Laura thought about her own parents, ridiculous and flamboyant as they were. But she had loved them. She had loved them simply for being there. There were certainly things she would have changed about her upbringing, but in the end it had been enough to know that they were there and she was loved.

“I don’t think you need to do anything in particular,” said Laura. “Just so long as you’re there.”

André looked at her as though he understood. “It isn’t particularly pleasant to be alone, is it?” he said. He twined his fingers through hers, swinging their joined hands. “We’ll muddle through. Together.”

Laura squeezed his hand in response. “Yes,” she agreed. “Together.”

Chapter 35

T
he Prefecture of Police was just as intimidating as Colin had claimed.

When I’d made my plans to visit the Musée de la Préfecture de Police, I had pictured one of those narrow townhouse museums—three stories of exhibits with handwritten cards, flanked by a few mannequins in moth-eaten uniforms. Instead, 1 Rue des Carmes turned out to be a rambling modern structure sunk well below street level and surrounded by police cars and lots of scaffolding.

Feeling furtive, I slunk through the glass doors, into the beige-walled lobby, which seemed to double as a booking station. There were notices in French all over the walls and some dubious-looking characters waiting on benches.

I sidled over to the front desk. “
Où puis-je trouver le musée, s’il vous plaît?
I asked timidly, wishing I had taken something other than eighteenth-century drama and Renaissance lyric poetry for my college French credits. Ronsard was lovely, but he wasn’t much help for coming up with useful phrases like “Hi. I’m not a criminal, I just want to see the archives.”

The man at the desk took the crimes I was perpetrating on his language in the kindest possible spirit. He smiled tiredly and pointed me towards a sign that said MUSEUM, 3RD FLOOR.

Oops.

Eschewing the pint-size elevator, I marched determinedly up the stairs. I had left Colin back in the hotel room, by his choice this time.

I had woken up feeling strangely hungover. My head ached, my mouth was gummy, and I had that vague sense of foreboding that generally comes of making a fool of oneself in public. Then I had looked next to me, at Colin, sprawled out with one arm under his head, mouth slightly open, eyes scrunched up in sleep, and remembered. The party. Colin’s mother. Selwick Hall. The bridge on the Seine.

It wasn’t just that we hadn’t discussed it. He hadn’t given me time to discuss it. I would have called it passion if it hadn’t felt so much like postponement.

But that had been nighttime, with the house lights from the apartments on the Île Saint-Louis twinkling on the Seine, and then, later, in our jewel box of a room, with the birds flying low across the painted mural on the ceiling. It was easier to hide at night, between the shadows and the stars. In the gray, uncaffeinated light of morning, treacherous siblings, overreaching film stars, and vindictive stepfathers/cousins were harder to avoid.

I bagged the first shower, leaving Colin sleeping. When I came out, wrapped in a towel much smaller than the towels to which I was usually accustomed, he propped himself up on one elbow.

“Did you want to go to the prefecture today? Since you didn’t yesterday.”

Ouch. I made a face at him. “It wasn’t entirely a wasted afternoon. One of the artists, Julie Beniet, was the wife of one of the people I was researching. The first wife,” I corrected myself, and then wondered if I shouldn’t have. Second spouses were a touchy topic at the moment. “She even painted a portrait of him.”

“Planning to put it in the dissertation?”

That was a low blow. I lobbed one of the sofa pillows at him before retreating into the bathroom to use the exceedingly rickety French blow dryer on my chin-length hair.

“Why are you suddenly so concerned about my work habits?” I called back over my shoulder, in between the blow dryer breaking down and starting up again. It clearly hadn’t had its caffeine either.

“I just don’t want you to get angsty about it and blame me,” he said speciously.

I rooted around in my overnight bag for jeans and a sweater. No need to dress up today, not until tonight—and then only if Colin reconciled with his family. I wiggled into my jeans. “I have most of the information I needed already, via the Silver Orchid’s report to the Pink Carnation.” I’d found that in his collection. “I just need confirmation of it from the French side. The Prefecture archives have the old ledgers from the Ministry of Police and the Paris Prefecture.”

“You should go, then,” he said. “You’ll be happier if you do.”

I’d originally planned to spend the day researching, and Colin knew it. But that had been when he’d been scheduled for a cozy lunch with his mother and sister. Somehow, I didn’t think that was going to be happening.

On the night table, Colin’s cell phone buzzed. We both ignored it.

I sat down on the bed next to him. “I’m beginning to feel like you’re trying to get rid of me.” He didn’t rise to the bait. “Are you sure? We could do something fun today. Like, um … go see where the Bastille used to be?”

What did one do in France if one wasn’t looking at historic sites? I was at a loss. My idea of fun was tracing the route the tumbril that carried Marie Antoinette had taken from prison to guillotine. I mean, I knew that people did come to Paris to do other things; I just wasn’t quite sure what they were. Shopping? Art galleries? Eating lots of pastries?

That last did have its appeal. I did like those marzipan pigs.

Colin levered himself up to press a quick kiss to my lips. “You go research. I’ll find you at the Prefecture in a few hours. We can have dinner together, just us.”

Funny, just the day before I had been yearning for some just-us time. Now it made me obscurely sad.

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll give you a call if I finish at the Prefecture early?”

“Or if they book you,” he said, “I’ll come bail you out.”

“Don’t laugh,” I warned. “I’m terrified of setting off an alarm or touching the wrong thing.”

“Just don’t walk off with any of their records.”

I thought of that as I made my way past the information desk on the third floor—their third floor, our fourth. I’d learned that one the hard way. No, the nice police officers had not been amused when I had almost barged into the administrative offices on what really ought to have been the third floor if they had been counting properly.

This floor, however, was quite definitely the museum. Yellowing, typed card? Check. Wax mannequin in musty uniform? Check. It was spread out across one broad floor rather than upstairs and downstairs on narrower ones, but otherwise it was just what I had expected. There were panoramic maps of Paris, old city ordinances, a smattering of weaponry. I strolled through the exhibits, past the seventeenth-century and the Affair of the Poisons towards the Revolution and my people.

Tucked away in a corner, I found Georges Cadoudal. There was a print of him, a round-faced man with an open shirt collar. He looked like what my brother would have called “jolly.” He didn’t seem like the sort to keep the entire Ministry of Police hopping. Which just went to show you couldn’t judge anyone by his cover. Notices calling for the arrest of the various conspirators had been framed and posted on the walls. I saw one for André Jaouen, describing him as of medium height, with brown hair and glasses.

There were ledgers, too, immured under glass in the display cases that ran at waist height along the walls, one open to the page where Cadoudal’s description had been entered upon his arrest. Cadoudal had been arrested in March, after a rather spectacular chase scene, detailed in the typewritten card next to his photo. There was no corresponding entry for Jaouen.

This was all very interesting, but I needed the documents that weren’t kept under glass, the other ledgers, warrants, and reports. I made my way back to the front of the museum, where the man at the information desk obligingly led me back into the archives, gestured me to a chair, and, after nobly not snickering at my awful French—well, not too loudly—brought me a large box with the items I had requested.

It was all there. The official bulletins sent by the Prefecture of Police to the First Consul, André’s private reports to Fouché, Gaston Delaroche’s half-mad mutterings. The man was exceptionally fond of memos. Some of them looked as though they had been crumpled and flung against a wall upon receipt. But Fouché wouldn’t do a thing like that, would he?

I found the transcript of the questioning of Querelle, the crucial pages blurred by a spill of ink. Jaouen’s report on the matter followed, written in a crisp, clean hand.

I was amused to note that there was mention of a governess in the official papers following Jaouen’s disappearance, but only as a potential witness to be brought in for questioning. They had never figured it out, not any of them. Ten points to the Pink Carnation.

I worked my way through the disordered pile of material, taking notes in pencil in the notebook I keep for the days I’m too lazy to carry a laptop, or archives that won’t allow electronics. It was fascinating to see the false trails Jaouen had planted, the misleading reports he had written up for his supposed superiors and, later, the elements of the search for him, set out in painstaking detail, reported by Delaroche to Fouché and Fouché to Bonaparte himself.

Laura was right; the capture of Cadoudal had diverted everyone’s attention but that of Delaroche. That man sure knew how to hold a grudge.

The official reaction to Delaroche’s capture appeared to be something along the lines of “Good riddance to bad rubbish.”

I jerked around as the archivist tapped me on the shoulder. Uh-oh. Had I been drooling on the documents? Talking to myself?

Apparently not. The archivist, looking rather amused, murmured that my boyfriend was waiting for me.

He was? I checked my watch. Wow. Somehow, six hours had passed. I became vaguely aware that my shoulders felt sore and I had the sort of dull headache that’s the caffeine addict’s warning that too much time has passed between coffees. Mmm, coffee. And maybe some
pain au chocolat
. My stomach reminded me that I hadn’t fed it for a while either. Man cannot live on documents alone.

I murmured my thanks to the archivist, gathered up my notebooks, relinquished my ledgers, and wandered, stiff-legged, into the museum to find my boyfriend. I tracked him down in the back room, in front of a collection of miscellaneous implements of destruction, including an early attempt to create a multi-barreled gun. He was studying that last with a great deal of interest when I approached.

“Good research session?” he asked.

“Mmm-hmm.” I yawned, rubbing my eyes. “I feel like I’ve been sleeping for two hundred years.”

Colin assessed me with an experienced eye. “You need coffee, don’t you?”

“Please? I promise I’ll be human once you caffeinate me.”

He could have made snide comments about not making promises I couldn’t keep, but instead he held out a paper bag to me, one of the narrow ones that more resembles an envelope than a shopping bag. “Here. I got this for you. We’ll see if this keeps you occupied until I can get some caffeine into you.”

I drew out his gift as we walked. Despite being paperbacked, it was pretty heavy, the pages thick and glossy. It was an exhibition catalogue from the special exhibit at the Cognacq-Jay, featuring the paintings of Julie Beniet and Marguerite Gérard. Unlike the exhibit, this version contained full biographical details on both women, with a great deal of text.

I accompanied Colin blindly down the stairs, making my way down by chance and luck and the occasional hand on my elbow. About halfway through, I found the portrait of André Jaouen, with two full pages of text going through his career in the National Assembly and his subsequent employment at the Prefecture. It got more perfunctory as it went on, which made sense; the curator’s interest had been in Beniet and the circumstances surrounding this specific painting, not what had happened to Jaouen after her death.

Nonetheless, in the interest of thoroughness, there were a few terse sentences stating that after being implicated in the Cadoudal affair of 1804, Jaouen had relocated to England, where he had remarried, the daughter of the artist Michel de Griscogne and the poetess Chiara de Veneti.

Poor Laura. Even in death she was still Michel and Chiara de Griscogne’s little girl. From an art historian’s view, however, that was the interesting thing about her. There was even a little round illustration set into the bottom of the page showing one of her father’s sculptures, now in the Bode-Museum in Berlin.

Jaouen and his second wife had moved in 1805 to America, where they remained until Jaouen’s death in 1838. Taking advantage of the French-speaking community in New Orleans, Jaouen established a law practice there and eventually became a Louisiana state court judge.

On the facing page, the curator had placed the drawing of a cherubic-looking Gabrielle and the infant Pierre-André. The baby in the picture, Pierre-André Jaouen, the editor pompously informed us, had gone on to become one of the leading naturalists of his day, known for his fine botanical drawings of the foliage of the American South. A colleague of Audubon, they had collaborated on several projects.

Hadn’t there been rumors at one point that Audubon was really the lost Dauphin?

I filed that away for later speculation and went on reading. Gabrielle Jaouen had gone on to become a noted diarist, an advocate for the abolition of slavery and, very late in life, a noisy proponent of the rights of women. She had died in her home in New York in 1893 at the age of ninety-five, leaving behind five husbands, twenty-odd great-grandchildren, and a vast pile of tracts and memoirs.

I wondered what Laura had thought of it all and whether she and Jaouen had had any children of their own. There were fairly easy ways to find out—including tracking down the memoirs of Gabrielle Jaouen de Montfort Adams Morris Belmont van Antwerp—but it was well out of the purview of my current research.

I came up for air about a block from the Prefecture, on the doorstep of a small patisserie. “Thanks,” I said, rubbing my eyes at the transition from the shiny page to less shiny reality. “This is perfect.”

“The book or the café?”

I could smell coffee in the air. There was a long glass case in front of me, displaying an impressive array of pastries, including—yes!—three large marzipan pigs.

“Both,” I said, closing the book and stuffing it into my bag, along with my notebooks, my travel umbrella, a bottle of extra-strength Tylenol, and a plastic thing of tissues that had exploded their plastic. “Did you go back to the Cognacq-Jay?”