I had been slapped on the cheek by my enemy’s glove. I had been called out. And then Mrs. Hardcastle was in the dining room, breathless, barely able to utter her words.
“Saw the royal messenger from the window, my dear. Is it so?”
I handed her the invitation. Henri stubbed out his cigarette and immediately pulled out another.
“It is so!” cried Mrs. Hardcastle. “Oh my, but won’t the Miss Mortimers be jealous! But what shall you wear, my dear? I’m certain you don’t have a thing. We’ll have to call in a seamstress, immediately, this very morning, or …”
I sat down at the table, trying to sift what I knew, to order, to sort, to calculate. What could I gain by facing the emperor? And yet, now that the enemy was clearly defined, what else was there? Despite all my best efforts, despite all that had happened, Uncle Tully was not safe, none of us were, and Lane was as lost to me as the day he left Stranwyne. And what of Uncle Tully? What if I left this house and did not return, like Mr. Babcock? Like Lane?
“Shall you go?” asked Henri, his voice low beneath the chatter. Mrs. Hardcastle was now discussing my clothing possibilities with Mrs. DuPont, of all people. I glanced at the invitation still in her hand, fluttering about as she talked, at the over-fancy, overconfident script that said my name. Nothing would be resolved by sitting at home. And I had been challenged. I turned to Henri.
“Will you escort me?”
He sighed, exhaling smoke. “I think I had better, Miss Tulman.”
And then the bell in the dining room rang, shrill and insistent.
I leapt to my feet. “I wonder what Mary could want,” I said over the ringing, snatching up Lane’s things and my skirts to go.
“Do you always run when your maid rings a bell, Miss Tulman?” Henri asked. I straightened my back.
“Almost always, Mr. Marchand. She’s a very good maid.”
I left him to chuckle in his self-imposed cloud.
20
For the next hours, my activities were polar extremes. I received a reply by telegram from Mr. Babcock’s offices, arranging for the transport of his body to the family burial plot in Westminster. And I was fitted for a dress, my perceived social standing high enough to gain me credit for the cloth. Mrs. Hardcastle, Mary, and a tiny French seamstress became an unlikely team, united in the common purpose of making me fit for an emperor I heartily despised. I could only hope the dress wouldn’t be the cause of my new life in a French debtor’s prison.
“Would you like to trade places with me, Marguerite?” I asked the child. She was sitting in the corner, one of the French fairy-tale books I’d found in my room propped open in her lap. I’d realized that these must be her books, that my grandmother’s room was a place she came often, but she was not reading this time. She was watching, wide-eyed, as I stood, arms over head in my underclothes, having swaths of cloth pinned all over me, listening to a frank discussion on certain aspects of my figure as if I were an interesting piece of horseflesh. “They’d never notice,” I whispered to her. I was rewarded with a giggle.
I’d never asked Mrs. DuPont about the comings and goings at the courtyard door — too many other worries had intervened — and she had never asked me about the bells that rang all over the house about once every hour when I was not above stairs. Curiosity seemed to be sadly lacking for the both of us, until on my way to the attic room after my fitting, I happened to glance out the round window on the upper floor. Far below, I saw a young man talking with Mrs. DuPont at the courtyard door. I watched as he put something slyly in her hand, perhaps a letter or something folded in paper.
I hurried down the stairs and around the landings, through the foyer, and into the back corridor. But Mrs. DuPont was no longer there, and there was no one at the door. She wasn’t in the kitchen either, only Mr. DuPont, staring dreamily at the wall, eating a bowl of porridge. I ducked away before he could see me and start one of our bizarre one-sided conversations, and found myself staring at the closed door to the servants’ quarters.
I was not actually lacking curiosity, far from it; the door to Mrs. DuPont’s room was a terrible temptation, even more so than the time I had succumbed and opened Lane’s. And this time I knew the house belonged to me. I reached out a hand for the door latch. For all of our posturing and squabbling over names, for all of her glorious dinners, hoping I would choose ease of service over actual authority in my own house, I was frightened of Mrs. DuPont. I did not understand her, could not make out where her allegiances lay except with the Bonapartes. Was her enthusiasm that of a loyal subject, or a more personal devotion? If she knew enough to lead the emperor’s agents to my uncle, surely she would have already done so? I put my hand on the latch.
Of course, she also might be choosing an income over the emperor, and there was the nexus of my fear. I was afraid of what Mrs. DuPont might do if she thought I couldn’t pay. And despite having searched through many of Mr. Babcock’s papers, the location of my money in Paris was still an enigma. I dropped my hand from her latch, and instead stepped out the back door and into the courtyard.
The sun was lowering, sinking down behind the steeply pitched roofs, and I could hear children in some other part of the garden, behind a screen of hedges, but that was not what captured my attention. I had come to see if there was any sign of the young man, and there he was, just a little way down the path, a large, strapping sort of lad with his pants tucked into his boots. But he was not with Mrs. DuPont. He was with Mary, and Mary was giggling in a way that showed perhaps one-third of the sense I knew her to possess.
The young man took one of Mary’s hands and kissed it before leaning forward to whisper in her ear. I felt my eyebrows rise. Mary Brown had always held strong opinions about her proper duties as my maid, but the role she’d felt most keenly was that of chaperone, a rather prudish, overprotective one, in my opinion. Mary would snap like a disgruntled goose if Lane’s skin ever brushed anything other than my hand. Not that we hadn’t outwitted her. Often. But we’d certainly never done so in public.
Mary caught sight of me and yanked her hand away, pushing the young man from her ear. The boy looked over his shoulder, grinned, made a motion as if he was tipping an invisible cap, whispered one last thing in Mary’s ear, making her giggle, and then trotted away down the path. I walked out to meet her, and Mary tossed up her chin, despite the fact that her freckles were disappearing beneath blotches of pink.
“Robert is a right nice young man,” she said with no preamble. “And you don’t say ‘Robert’ when you’re French, you say ‘Ro-bear’ like there’s a big, furry animal on the end of it. He brings the groceries to Mrs. DuPont, and he’s good to that Mr. DuPont, even though the man ain’t much of talker, if you take my meaning.”
“I thought you said there weren’t any groceries, Mary.”
“I said there weren’t any groceries that time, Miss. He’s a nice boy,” she said.
“I’m sure he is,” I replied carefully. “Does Robert … does he speak English?”
“Not so much. But he’s teaching me French, and I can’t be spending all my years up in the attics, Miss.”
“I wouldn’t expect you to.” Part of me wanted to laugh, the other was aware of a great, empty void in my chest, a reminder that I was full of echoes. “But, Mary, surely … you couldn’t have known Robert very long, could you?” The last I’d counted, we had been in Paris for exactly four days.
I had thought this quite gentle as far as a remonstrance went, but Mary’s brows came down, still on the defensive. I took her arm, and she let out her annoyance in a little puff of air. Then she leaned her head on my shoulder, and we began walking back to the house. This was not the way a lady was supposed to walk with her maid, I supposed, but then again, I did not have a history of correct behavior with the servants. I wondered how she would feel if tonight went badly, if I decided we had to take Uncle Tully and flee from Paris. It seemed that any move I made — or didn’t make — was bound to hurt someone. My feet felt heavy in the gravel as we approached the back step.
“Miss,” Mary said suddenly, straightening up. “I’ve been thinking on this for a while now, Miss, only I hadn’t said, but … that Lane Moreau, now.” My arm stiffened slightly in hers. “Before you was coming to us, he didn’t go about with any of them other girls in the village, not a bit of it, and he could’ve, Miss, Lord knows he could’ve. Mostly he was with Mr. Tully, of course, and we’re both knowing what a job that is. But when you came, you was the only one I saw turning his head, and you turned it proper, if you don’t mind me saying. But, Miss, if all that’s
