I nodded, eyes roving quickly over the deck. We were alone.
Morny smiled, leaning his elbows on the rail. “Your information concerning the empress was appreciated. The emperor has been glad to commandeer this boat to ease your journey back to England.”
I stared, all at once aware of the very deep, cold water that was all around us. I didn’t even know if I should be afraid. I turned my face to the spray, letting the wind carry our words out to sea. “I’d hoped His Majesty would not find me so quickly. The empress will be well, then?”
“Her wine has been changed and her room purged. Her doctor is of the opinion that the doses were slight, meant to be given over time, and that there will be no lasting effects. The empress will not be informed. She has been told that she was ill, and is now recovering.”
I nodded once again and waited.
“The tunnel beneath the Tuileries has been sealed,” he said. “But not before it was explored.” He looked me square in the eye. “I need you to tell me, Mademoiselle Tulman, what killed Charles Arceneaux and what he was doing beneath the Tuileries.”
I pressed my lips together and looked out to sea. The boat dipped slightly, and then rode up a wave.
“Mademoiselle, I am going to be frank and hope for frankness in return. There have been two attempts on the life of the emperor this month alone. And with the discovery of the plot against his wife, and from so close … Louis is in constant fear. He has become superstitious, a fanatic with this warning of Pisces. The man will not even eat his caviar.”
I closed my eyes for a moment. It had not occurred to me until that moment that Pisces was the sign of the fish.
“Until Louis produces an heir with his name, the throne is insecure.”
“Monsieur de Morny, Ben … I mean to say, Charles, was obsessed with being of the Bonaparte bloodline, to the point of madness. Whatever he was doing, he did not try to assassinate the emperor.” I shook my head at the irony of defending Ben’s innocence.
“And in the tunnel, in the big room, what was Charles doing there?”
I held on to my bonnet, willing my voice to sound calm. If the emperor was ignorant of the happenings in the cavern, then surely he was ignorant of Uncle Tully. “I don’t know what Charles was doing, exactly. Experimenting, I believe.”
“And how he died?”
I had an unbidden vision of purple-tinged fire, and the smoke coming from Ben Aldridge’s skin. “Electricity,” I said. “That is what killed him. But …” I bit my lip. “The contents of the barrels, sir, that is dangerous if exposed to flame, and would be best left where it is.” I lifted my chin and looked away. “I don’t know anything else.”
Morny shook his head. “But I think you do, Mademoiselle.” He waited, making me look at him before he went on. “Charles was not the only Bonaparte running about beneath the Tuileries, was he?”
“Please,” I said, “he knows nothing of this. He knows only the father who raised him. This news, it would be … most unwelcome.”
The boat smacked hard into a choppy wave. “Moreau is a name known to us,” Morny said. “There was a soldier captured in the war, very loyal, taken to a prison in the south of England — that is where your estate is, is it not? He escaped, but he did not return to France. After Louis’s time in London, this man Moreau, was honored, I think, to raise a son of the house of Bonaparte, a boy with the blood of the Emperor Napoleon the First running through his veins. He could not have known that the father of this child would also become the second emperor of France, Napoleon the Third. A double honor. And yet while he accepted the first, a baby still in its blankets, he did not accept the second that was brought to him, an older child, also a boy, whose mother was going mad.”
I took a deep breath. Part of me was longing to know more of this, and part of me was longing for him to stop giving me so many things to conceal.
“Will Therese Arceneaux … will she be taken care of?”
“The emperor pays for her care. This is a thing we also do not tell the empress.” He sighed. “I have watched the young man, on the boat and on the dock. He has a strong look of his father.” Morny straightened from the rail. “It is a strange thing,” he said, “being an illegitimate son. On the streets, you are of the lowest form, while in the court, you become a duke. Our Louis is many things, but his heart, it is soft for his children. We agree with you, Miss Tulman, that it is best for the young man to return to England. The throne of France must be secure. We …”
At that moment, Lane came around the deck, jacket collar turned up against the wind. He checked his walk when he saw me with the uniformed Frenchman, and approached warily, like a cat. “Have you been in the wind all this time, Katharine?” he said. His use of my name had been just the slightest bit possessive.
“Mr. Moreau, this is —”
“Monsieur de Morny,” the Frenchman interjected.
Morny positively beamed at this reply. It was possible, I supposed, that Lane spoke better French than the emperor. Morny stopped looking Lane up and down like a prize horse and turned back to me.
“It was most pleasant to speak with you, Mademoiselle. I am glad we are of like mind.”
“Thank you,” I replied with perhaps too much relief, because I got a sharp gray look from my side.
Morny bowed and went belowdecks, and then it was Lane’s turn to lean on the rail.
“Mr. Tully’s got his cloth hung, and he’s playing about with that box. Mary’s with him.”
I glanced back at the door Charles de Morny had gone through. “Is he locked in?”
Lane looked at me sidelong. “Yes, but the boat’s almost empty. You don’t have to mother him too much, Katharine.”
As Lane’s tone showed this to be a point of pride rather than admonishment, I let it go. The sea spat foam in a fine spray. Lane loved the sea. I could see it in his face. I looked at his hand on the rail, the color like creamed tea, such a contrast to mine. That trait had not come from his father.
“What?” he said, grinning. I snapped awake.
“I was just wondering if you liked the smell,” I said.
“You mean the sea? I do. I do like it. Now that we’re out of the harbor.”
He took my hand that had been on the rail, and held it between both of his. It was so much warmer there.
“So, are you ready to discuss money?” I watched his brows come down.
“I hadn’t forgotten.”
I proceeded with caution. This whole thing was silly, in my opinion. But if these were the terms he could live with, then so be it. I also knew Lane well enough to guess that the sums in his head were very likely ridiculous. “Did you know that Uncle Tully can make a bell ring with his box?”
He was playing with my fingers now, stretching them out one by one, examining. I tried to concentrate.
“And by ringing a bell with his box, I mean a bell that is in no way connected to his box.”
I had his attention now. “How can that be?”
“No idea, of course. But while we were in Paris, Uncle Tully could push his little lever on the box in the attic and make the bells ring downstairs. Without a string, or even a wire.”
I’d given a good deal of thought to this, last night in my bed, with the silver swan gleaming in the light of the candle I’d left burning, letting Marianna watch over me from where she sat by the wall, waiting to be packed. I’d imagined bells to summon a policeman, to wake a house in the case of fire, even to call a maid. Putting my uncle’s invention to such uses would not only be practical — a welcome change from destructive — but it would also be, I hoped, rather lucrative. Especially with someone who could carve the moldings to make beautiful designs for them. But I would let Lane come to most of these conclusions on his own; probably he could come to better ones. I thought Marianna might be rather pleased with me. The wind blew another cold salt spray, and I shivered.
“Come here, then,” Lane said, pulling me into his open jacket. I reached up and untied my bonnet, letting my head tuck beneath his chin, preferring the warmth of him to my hat. He watched the sea from over my head.
“Lane.” I hesitated. “You seemed so at home in Paris. Will you be sorry, do you think?”
