The Honorable Officer (24 page)

Henri sighed slowly. “I didn’t think I could lose a lover to my brother.”

Marcel chuckled and ran his hand along Henri’s muscled thigh. “I am loyal to a fault.” To his sister, to his first lover, to his colonel, to his colonel’s wife. And now, to his new lover. If his lover was loyal to him, too.

Henri pulled away, his eyes narrowed. He lifted his hand to Marcel’s cheek. “I am cynical.”

Marcel’s heart clenched. “I can leave the army soon. War never ends, but it is someone else’s turn. I am not a soldier.”

Henri smirked. “No, you are a dressmaker.”

Marcel felt his smile slip. Was that mockery? “I was originally a tailor. I already have ideas for breeches and a coat for you.”

Henri chuckled, his golden eyes warming. “I wear black or brown.”

Marcel shook his head. “Not anymore you don’t.”

Henri’s smile faded. “Do not try to change me.”

Marcel knew he was on slippery ground. He forced a broad smile. “Only your waistcoats, then. Something more flattering. Red, I think. Or yellow. Gold stitching.”

Henri shook his head, but stroked Marcel’s cheek, gentle fingers catching on stubble. “I don’t need a valet. I don’t want any sort of payment between me and a lover. My last lover was my valet and stayed with me longer than he wanted, out of obligation.”

Marcel nodded, but Henri sounded so wistful about his old valet that his heart hurt. What if he gave up everything and then Henri took his last lover back?

Chapter Twelve

The next day, Ondine woke herself up coughing, her nose flowing freely, so Hélène spent most of the day holding her little girl—hers, truly—calming her tantrums, drying her tears, and trying to get a handkerchief to her faster than the girl could use her hand or sleeve. During the midday meal in the nursery, a footman came to tell her Baron de la Brosse had returned and asked to see her. Charlotte promised to try to get Ondine to sleep. Hélène tidied herself in her room. She took her eyeglasses off and put them on and took them off.

There was a knock at her door. She held her eyeglasses up to see it was her husband. He smiled at her, but she barely noticed it over the shaking of her hands.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, coming toward her.

“I…” How should she say the baron wouldn’t approve of her?

“Papa has always liked you,” said Jean-Louis, apparently reading her mind. “He said so in his first letter about this whole business.”

“He wasn’t expecting me to…” Hélène tried to put her finger on the problem, but couldn’t think.

“Shhh. It’s all right.” He put his arms around her gently. The warmth of his chest and steadiness of his heartbeat calmed her.

She put her glasses on, and Jean-Louis held out his arm. She felt his hard bicep and was thrilled that she knew what his arms looked like under his clothing. She blushed.

They didn’t speak all the way down the stairs, but when she moved to take off the eyeglasses before going into the study, Jean-Louis stayed her hand. “It’s best to have all your wits about you when speaking with my father.”

At her shock, he shrugged. “He sounds lighthearted, but you have to watch closely. He’s shrewd.”

She swallowed nervously. This wasn’t helping her nerves at all.

Jean-Louis tapped at the door, and his father called for them to come in. Hélène curtsied deeply and then could not bring herself to lift her head. There was an uneasy silence broken only by the ringing in her ears.

Suddenly, she saw boots in front of her and stood up straight to see the baron only two steps from her. His shoulders and belly were broader than Jean-Louis’, reminding her of portraits of King Francois I of France or Henry VIII of England. He held out his hand, and she automatically put hers in it. He bowed over her hand. He held onto it after he straightened, and she looked everywhere except his eyes.

“It’s all right,
ma chère
,” said Jean-Louis’ father. “I do not bite.”

She glanced at Jean-Louis, tall and strong, his expression unreadable.

“Do have a seat, Madame.” The baron tugged at her hand slightly, so she took a step toward the chairs placed in front of his desk. He helped her to her seat before nodding to Jean-Louis and taking his own chair. Jean-Louis sat next to her and touched her arm.

“Now,
félicitations
, children. I should have said that first, shouldn’t I?” said the baron with a chuckle.

“Merci, Monsieur,” Hélène said softly. Jean-Louis said the same more loudly.

“I did as you asked, Jean-Louis, and didn’t spread the news around. You would like it to be a secret until you decide your strategy,
n’est-ce pas
?”

“Oui, Papa,” said Jean-Louis. “The more we think about this, the more there appears to be a link with Hélène’s aunt and uncle and with their business partners, the Ménine family.”

“Right,” said the baron, nodding thoughtfully. “Well, I spoke with your aunt and uncle, Hélène. May I call you Hélène?”

She jumped at being addressed. “Of course, Monsieur.”

“And you must call me
Beau-Papa
, the way Sandrine does,” he said.

Hélène wondered if Amandine had ever called the baron Beau-Papa—or been invited to.

“They were hiding something,” the baron was saying. “They were desperate to get Ondine back, but nearly as desperate to get you to a convent. ‘She’ll be safe there,’ said your uncle. Any meaning to that?”

Only as the silence stretched did Hélène realize the baron really wanted her answer. “I don’t understand. They started talking more about the convent ever since…” She tailed off, unwilling to say Amandine’s name again to Jean-Louis.

“Since Amandine’s death,” said the baron. “And they had never mentioned it before?”

“Well, they spoke about it before I took charge of Ondine, but hardly ever after. They were happy to leave Ondine to me and see her for a few minutes a day. Before Ondine, though, they said they would be relieved to have me off their hands.”

There was silence again, and Hélène looked up and met the baron’s eyes. He frowned.

Jean-Louis shifted in his seat. He held her eyes for a moment before turning back to his father. “Did you speak to the Ménines?”

The baron nodded slowly. “I did, briefly. I didn’t want them to realize I was digging. I went to see your Uncle Ferand again at the manufactory, and got myself introduced to both the father and the son, Bernard. I understand times are hard right now, but very soon they will be able to move forward with a new project.”

He stared at Hélène, but she had no idea what he was talking about. She nodded. “My uncle mentioned there was some sort of problem with the bankers.”

Jean-Louis fidgeted again.

“That is all I know,” she said, directly to her husband, feeling tears rising. “I cared for Ondine and don’t know anything about the furniture factory.”

He smiled slightly and patted her arm, leaving his hand there, which steadied her pulse.

“Before riding back here, I spoke to the bankers in question and told them I might be interested in investing. They directed me to the manufactory’s lawyers, who agreed not to mention my visit to anyone but told me they could not do anything until March the fifth.”

“March the fifth?” asked Jean-Louis, sitting forward.

Hélène frowned. “My birthday.”

“Yes,” said Jean-Louis.

She looked down at her hands; she was not hinting about presents. It was already February the twenty-eighth, and she had hardly thought about her birthday. She had hardly thought about it for years, since it was a day like any other.

“
Mon Dieu
,” said the baron. “I have always found it odd your father did not provide for you better. I knew him slightly when we were young, and he didn’t seem the type to forget anything. Very precise.”

At this seeming non
sequitur
, Hélène looked at the fist he clenched on his desk. She looked at Jean-Louis, who stared at his father, his jaw clenched.

Jean-Louis said, “Did you make another appointment with the lawyers, Papa?”

“As a matter of fact, I did,” said the baron with a smug smile. “I have a feeling, Mademoiselle—sorry, Madame…Hélène—we will discover your father provided for you better than you have been led to believe.”

“I don’t understand,” she said, though she had a suspicion.

“I don’t want to say too much and disappoint you,” said the baron.

Jean-Louis shook his head. “My father is saying there must be some terms in your father’s will that something will be given you on your twenty-fourth birthday if you have not married or gone into a convent by then.”

“Or died,” said the baron. “So many unexplained accidents. Fires. Shots.”

Hélène gasped. “Someone is trying to kill me for an inheritance I don’t know about?”

Jean-Louis nodded when she looked at him again. “That is the conclusion I drew. I don’t know what Ondine has to do with it. Maybe leverage to get to you, or maybe she’s seen as expendable.”

“Then it is certainly not my aunt and uncle behind this,” said Hélène. “They thought of me as a burden, but they would never hurt Ondine.”

“They seemed frightened for her safety,” said the baron. “More frightened than they should have been. They made up some obvious lies about your, ah, stability. I told them all I knew was Ondine was with Jean-Louis, and I didn’t know where he went after Franche-Comté.”

“But if someone is after me, then I have been putting Ondine in danger all this time. I should have left her with you and gone away,” Hélène said to Jean-Louis. “I’m sorry. I should go.”

She started to rise, but Jean-Louis’ hand clamped onto her arm, and she sat back down. “You are my wife now. Maybe if we had puzzled it out in the beginning, I would have agreed, but not now.”

Hélène’s heart sank. Did he regret marrying her?

The baron laughed. “Jean-Louis, you are a terrible liar.”

Hélène looked at him in shock.

The baron shook his head. “You would have said, ‘Thank you for my daughter.
Adieu
. Good luck with the assassins’? I might have left you too much to your own devices, but—”

Jean-Louis’ cheeks reddened. “No, of course not. I would have found someplace safe for them both. Ondine—”

“Ondine would have been devastated if you separated her from Hélène,” said the baron. There was a long pause as he fidgeted with a quill, still smiling to himself.

Jean-Louis sighed. “No, of course. I think it all would have happened much the same way. We suspected from the shots in Dijon that someone was aiming at Hélène.”

Hélène shuddered both at the threat to herself and at how close Jean-Louis had come to being shot. Really, she should go off alone. Maybe she would join a convent, or at least hide in one until this was all over. She wiped away tears.

Jean-Louis squeezed her arm, and she looked up at him. He frowned at her, worried. She tried to smile.

“I think we will pay a surprise call on the lawyers, Papa,” said Jean-Louis. “And not wait until the fifth. Maybe we can find out what Hélène was meant to inherit and why she did not.”

****

They debated long and hard if they would take Ondine to Paris with them and decided in the end to leave her in the de la Brosse manor for the time being. Jean-Louis thought she would be safer, but Hélène did not want to leave Ondine, her baby. Jean-Louis overruled her, though he softened the blow by saying Ondine would not like to travel, as sick as she was.

Emmanuel and Fourbier were chosen to go with Jean-Louis and Hélène: Fourbier because he was indispensable and Emmanuel because the baron thought he should do something.

The baron, Henri, and Cédric complained at being left behind. Henri lobbied to take Emmanuel’s place in the carriage or to exchange Fourbier for Cédric. Fourbier was remarkably silent during the debate, which Jean-Louis thought unlike him.

Jean-Louis refused to consider whether he was betraying his tiny daughter as he tugged at Hélène to leave the house, Ondine’s tantrum echoing down the stairs. “We’ll be back in four days,” he said. “And there’s no reason to bring everyone along. She’ll be all right, playing with Cédric’s sons while we are gone. And Charlotte is here.”

Hélène sniffled. “She has never spent a night without me, never woken without me, not since she was a month old and I persuaded my aunt to fire the nursemaid who left her to cry.”

Jean-Louis felt worse. He stared back at the house. “She’ll be safe here.”

They were soon on the main road and moving as fast as the horses could take them. There were dark clouds in the west, so the coachman was trying to reach Paris before the storm.

As it turned out, they made good time over dry roads, changing horses frequently. They spent one night in an inn and the second day under black clouds until they reached the city walls, when snow began to swirl around them. By the time they arrived at the baron’s townhouse on the east side of the city, they were moving slowly, letting the horses pick their way over slippery cobblestones. It was nearly dark, the streets cold and desolate.

Jean-Louis wondered how cold it was in Franche-Comté and how his army fared in the winter campaign. He closed his eyes for a moment, praying for his friends, fellow officers, soldiers, and camp followers.

He also prayed there would not be so much snow that they would not be able to go to the lawyers’ offices the next day. He wanted to complete their errand and return to Ondine. In spite of his reassurances—and perhaps she was safer away from Hélène—he worried about her.

Hélène was silent for most of the journey. They closed the curtains to conserve heat, making it gloomier inside. Emmanuel got restless and chose to ride on top with the groom. He asked to get back inside at the next change and complained about the dropping temperature. Fourbier raised an eyebrow and handed extra cloaks up to the groom and coachman.

In the foyer of the townhouse, a manservant cleared his throat. “Messieurs, your mother is in residence.”

Emmanuel said, “Excellent!” and dashed off.

Jean-Louis gripped Hélène’s arm. He did not want to see his mother. He did not want Hélène to have to see his mother. She would sneer at him—no one knew his weaknesses like his mother did—and be terrible to Hélène.