"Another installment in the Pink Carnation series will excite the readers"
Reviewed by Leanne Davis
Posted February 26, 2012
Women's Fiction Historical | Romance Historical
Just out of her training to be a spy, Laura Grey is sent to
France as the governess to the children of Andre Jaouen, the
deputy minister of France. At first the job is mindless and
boring. The children resist her efforts to engage them and
she
never sees her employer.
As time passes, Laura learns that the similarities between
herself and Andre are stronger than one would expect. As she
is drawn deeper into the lives of the Jaouen family, she is
torn by her commitment to the cause she supports and her
attachment to the family she serves.
With each addition to the story of the Pink Carnation, the
reader will find themselves drawn into the lives of the
characters. THE ORCHID AFFAIR has less high adventure but a
richer love story than some of the others. This is one of
those series that just seems to get better with each new
release.
SUMMARY
"Pride and Prejudice" lives on" ("USA Today") in Lauren
Willig's Pink Carnation series, which has been hailed for
its addictive blend of history, romance, and adventure. In
"The Orchid Affair," Willig introduces her strongest heroine
yet. Laura Grey, a veteran governess, joins the Selwick Spy
School expecting to find elaborate disguises and thrilling
exploits in service to the spy known as the Pink Carnation.
She hardly expects her first assignment to be serving as
governess for the children of Andre Jaouen, right-hand man
to Bonaparte's minister of police. Jaouen and his arch
rival, Gaston Delaroche, are investigating a suspected
Royalist plot to unseat Bonaparte, and Laura's mission is to
report any suspicious findings. At first the job is as
lively as Latin textbooks and knitting, but Laura begins to
notice strange behavior from Jaouen-secret meetings and odd
comings and goings.
As Laura edges herself closer to her employer, she makes a
shocking discovery and is surprised to learn that she has
far more in common with Jaouen than she originally
thought... As their plots begin to unravel, Laura and Jaouen
are forced on the run with the children, and with the help
of the Pink Carnation they escape to the countryside,
traveling as husband and wife. But Delaroche will stop at
nothing to take down his nemesis. With his men hot on their
trail, can Laura and Jaouen seal the fate of Europe before
it's too late?
ExcerptChapter One
"Around the back," said the gatekeeper.
Laura scrambled backwards as a moving wall of iron
careened towards her face. From the distance, the gate was a
grand thing, a towering edifice of black metal with heraldic
symbols outlined in flaking gilt. From up close, it was
decidedly less attractive. Especially when it was on a
collision course with one's nose. Her nose might not be a
thing of beauty, but she liked it where it was.
"But—" Laura began to protest, grabbing at the bars
with her gloved hands. The leather skidded against the bars,
leaving long, rusty streaks across her palms. So much for
her last pair of gloves.
Laura bit down on a sharp exclamation of frustration. She
reminded herself of Rule #10 of the Guide to Better
Governessing: Never Let Them See You Suffer. Weakness bred
contempt. If there was one thing she had learnt, it was that
the meek never inherited anything—except maybe a gate
to the nose.
"I am expected," Laura announced, with all the dignity
she could muster.
It was hard to be dignified with raindrops dripping off
one's nose. She could feel wet strands of hair scraggling
down her back, under the back of her collar. Errant strands
tickled her back, making her want to squirm. Oh, heavens,
that itched.
She looked down her nose through the grille of ironwork.
"Kindly let me in."
Ahead of her, just a stretch of courtyard away, across
gardens grown unkempt with neglect, lay warmth and shelter.
Or at least shelter. From the look of the unlit windows,
there was precious little warmth. But even a roof looked
good to her right now. Roofs served an important purpose.
They kept off rain. Blasted rain. This was France, not
England. What was it doing mizzling like this?
The gatekeeper shrugged, and started to turn away.
Laura resisted the urge to reach through the bars, grab
him by the collar, and shake.
"The governess," she called after him, trying to keep any
touch of desperation from her voice. She refused to believe
her mission could end like this, this ignomiously, this
early. This moistly. "I am the governess."
"Around the back," the gatekeeper repeated and spat for
good measure.
Around the back? The house was a good mile around. Would
it really have been so much bother to have let her in
through the front? What had happened to liberte, egalite and
fraternite? Apparently, those sentiments didn't extend to
governesses.
Fine. If she had to go around the back, she would go
around the back. She hoped his next baguette was soggy and
his frogs' legs tasted of elderberry.
Laura took a step back, landing in a puddle that went
clear up to her ankle. She could feel the icy water soaking
through the worn leather of her sensible kid boot. At least,
it would have been sensible, if it hadn't had a hole the
size of Notre Dame in the sole. Laura took a deep breath in
and out through her nose. Right. If he wanted her around the
back, around the back it was. There was no point in starting
off on the wrong foot by fighting with the gatekeeper. Even
if the man was a petty cretin who shouldn't be trusted with
a latch key.
Temper, she reminded herself. Temper. She had been a
semi-servant for years enough now that one would think she
was immune to such petty slights.
Gathering up the sodden folds of her pelisse (dark brown
wool, sensible, warm, didn't show the dirt, largely because
it had already been designed to look like dirt), Laura
trudged the length of the street, skidding a bit as her
sodden shoes slipped and slid on the rounded cobbles. The
Hotel de Bac was in the heart of the Marais, among a twisted
welter of ancient streets, most without sidewalks. During
her long years in England, Laura had never thought she would
miss London, but she did miss the sidewalks. And the tea.
Mmm, tea. Hot, amber liquid with curls of steam rising
from the top, the curved sides of the cup warm against one's
palms on a cold day....
This has been her choice, she reminded herself. No one
had placed a sword to her side and demanded she go. She
could very well have stayed in England and done exactly as
she had done for the past sixteen years. She could have
walked primly down the sidewalked streets, herding her
charges in front of her, yanking them back from horse's
hooves and mud puddles and bits of interesting masonry; she
could have poured her tea from the nursery teapot, watching
the steam curl from the cup and knowing that she was seeing
in those endless curls a lifetime of the same streets, the
same tea, the same high pitched voices whining, "Miss Grey!
Miss Grey!"
She didn't want to be Miss Grey anymore. Miss Grey might
have warm hands and dry feet, but she wanted to be Laura
again, before it was too late and the stony edifice that was
Miss Grey closed entirely around her. Perhaps it was time to
get her feet wet.
The corner of Laura's mouth twisted as she looked down at
the soaking mess of her shoes. It was a pity Fate had to
take her quite so literally.
When she got to the side entrance, the gatekeeper was
waiting for her. He had an umbrella—which he held over
his own head. Unlike the main gate, this one was designed
for use rather than show, two thick slabs of dark wood
leading onto a square stone courtyard. He opened them just
wide enough for her wiggle through, in an undignified
sideways shuffle. That was, she was sure, quite intentional.
Rain oozed down the gray stone of the building, seeping
through the cracks in the masonry, puddling in the crevices
in the paving. Tucked away in a corner, a stone angel wept
over the round mouth of a well, raindrops dripping down her
face like tears. The long windows were the same unforgiving
gray as the stone.
After the bright, modern townhouses of Mayfair, the great
bulk of the seventeenth century mansion looked archaic and
more than a little threatening.
From very long ago, a whisper of memory presented itself,
of the fairy stories so in vogue in the fashionable salons
of her youth, of castles under curses, their ruined halls
echoing to the fearsome tread of the ogre, as a captive
princess shivered in her tower.
Laura didn't believe in fairy stories. Any ogres here
would be of the human variety.
One ogre, to be precise. Andre Jaouen. Thirty-six years
old. Formerly an avocat of Nantes. Now employed at the
Prefecture de Paris under the ostensible supervision of
Louis-Nicolas Dubois. Commonly known to be a protégé of
Bonaparte's Chief of Police, Joseph Fouche, to whom he bore
a distant relation. It was his department through which any
word of suspicious personages in Paris would come. It was
his job to hunt down and secure these threats to the Republic.
Which meant that it was Laura's job to get the
information to the Pink Carnation before he could get to them.
Just a simple little task. Nothing to write home about.
She had nothing to do but outwit a man whose very business
was the outwitting of others with no training but sixteen
years of governessing and a six month course in a spy school
in Sussex executed in a way that could only be called
cheerfully haphazard. The Selwicks had taught her to blacken
her teeth with soot and gum (just in case she wanted to play
a demented old hag); to ask the way to Rouen in a thick
Norman accent; and to swing on a rope through a window
without breaking the glass or herself. None of these skills
seemed entirely applicable to her current situation.
Laura wasn't under any illusions as to her
qualifications. The Pink Carnation would have been happier
inserting a maid into Jaouen's household, or a groom,
someone with more experience in the field, someone less
conspicuous, someone with a proven record, but Jaouen hadn't
needed a maid or a groom. He had needed a governess and
governess she was.
If there was one role she could play convincingly, it was
the one she had lived for the past sixteen years. She just
had to remember that.
Laura looked levelly at the gatekeeper, trying not to
wince at the rain that blew below her bonnet rim, plastering
wet strands of hair against her face.
"Hello," she said, as if she hadn't been forced to walk
half a mile in the rain when there had been a perfectly good
gate right there. "I am the governess. Your master is
expecting me."
The gatekeeper jerked his head brusquely to the side.
"This way."
There had been a formal entrance on the other side,
equipped with a grand porte-cochere designed to keep the
rain off more privileged heads than hers. No such luxuries
for a potential governess. Shivering, Laura picked her way
along behind the gatekeeper across the uncovered courtyard,
trying to avoid the slicks of mud where the stone had
cracked and crumbled, ruinous with neglect. Whatever
equality the revolution had preached, it didn't extend to
domestic staff.
Laura squelched her way down an uncarpeted corridor after
the gatekeeper, her sodden shoes leaving damp prints on the
floor. If possible, it felt even colder inside than out.
Despite the frost on the windows, there were no fires in any
of the grates. The Hotel de Bac was as cold as the grave.
Pushing open a door, the gatekeeper managed to force two
full syllables through his lips. "Wait here."
With that edifying communication, he stalked off the way
he had come.
So much for insinuating herself with the servants.
Perhaps the gatekeeper had a rule against fraternizing with
governesses. Heaven only knew what might rub off on him. He
might catch himself speaking in words of multiple syllables.
Shaking out her damp skirts, Laura turned in a slow
circle. Here was a once grand salon, entirely bare of
furniture. Smoke had dulled the once elegant silk hangings
on the walls and filmed the ornate plasterwork of the
ceiling. Darker patches on the wall revealed places where
paintings had once hung, but did no longer. The gold leaf
that had once picked out the frame of a painting set into
the ceiling had flaked off in large chips, giving the whole
a derelict air. The painting was still in its rightful
place, but dirt and wear had given the king of the gods a
decidedly down at the mouth look.
Most of the decay was due to neglect, but not all. The
coat of arms above the fireplace had been hacked into
oblivion. Deep gashes scored the shield, obliterating both
the symbols of rank and the ceremonial border around them.
Beneath a now lopsided border of plumes, the gashes gaped
like open wounds, oozing pure malice and mindless hate.
Laura felt a chill run down her spine that had nothing to
do with the January cold. So much for the old family de Bac.
She wondered what this new regime did to spies. That
particular information had not been part of her training
course, and probably for good reason.
Laura caught herself digging her nails into her palms and
made herself stop. The gloves were her only pair; she
couldn't afford to claw out the palms.
Stupid, Laura told herself. Stupid, stupid, not to have
expected this. Stupid to have believed that the Paris to
which she returned would be the Paris of her childhood. It
had been seventeen years since she had last been in Paris.
There had been a little event called a revolution in the
between. That was why she was here, after all.
During her training in Sussex, Laura had memorized the
new revolutionary calendar, with its odd ten day weeks and
re-named months. She had learned which place names had been
changed and which had changed back again. But what was a
name more or less? Nothing had prepared her for the scars
the city bore, the bloodstains which never quite came out,
the damaged buildings, the air of anxiety in the streets,
where any man might be an agent of the Minister of Police,
any soldier on his way to foment yet another coup, where the
blood might run from the Place de la Revolution once again
as it had before. The charming, urbane, decadent city of her
youth had become anxious and gray.
Laura gave herself a good shake. Of course, it felt gray.
It was raining. She wasn't going to let herself throw away a
heaven-sent opportunity all for the sake of a little fall of
rain. This was her chance. Her chance to do something more,
to be something more, to throw off the yoke of governessing
forever, even if the only way to do it was to pretend to be
the governess she had once been in truth. She only had to
prove to the Pink Carnation that she could spy as well as
she could teach.
Only, Laura mocked herself. As simple as that.
The door of the salon creaked open, the hinges giving way
with a strident squawk that made Laura half-trip over the
hem of her own dress.
Through the doorway strode a man in a caped coat.
Raindrops sparkled in his close-cropped brown hair and
created dark patches on the wool of his coat. The fabric
made a brisk swooshing sound as he walked, as if it were
hurrying to get out of his way.
Laura couldn't blame it. Jaouen walked with the
purposeful stride of a man who knew exactly where he was
going and woe betide anything that stood in his way.
His clothes were simple, serviceable, of the sort of
fabric that lasted for years and didn't show dirt. Whatever
he was in this game for, it wasn't for the pecuniary
pay-off. There was nothing of the dandy about him. His black
boots were flecked with fresh mud and old wear. His medium
brown hair had been cut short, in what might have been an
approximation of the Roman style currently in vogue, but
which Laura suspected was simply for convenience. Her new
employer—her potential employer, she corrected
herself—didn't seem the sort to waste unnecessary time
preening in front of a mirror. He looked like what he had
been, a lawyer from the provinces, still wearing the clothes
he had worn then.
Laura was standing, as she always stood, in a corner of
the room, her drab dress blending neatly into the shadows.
She was an adept at that. It was the reason the Pink
Carnation had recruited her, her ability to be neither seen
nor heard, to be as gray in character as she was in name.
But Andre Jaouen seemed to have no trouble finding her, even
in the gloom of the room. Without wasting a moment, he made
directly for her.
"Mlle Griscogne." It was a statement, not a question.
He wore spectacles, small ones, rimmed in dark metal. His
dossier had not specified that. Perhaps whoever had compiled
it hadn't thought it important. Laura disagreed. The glint
of the glass sharpened an already sharp gaze, sizing her up
and filleting her into neat pieces all in the space of a
moment's inspection.
"Sir." Laura forced herself not to flinch away.
Beneath the twin circles of glass, Jaouen's eyes were a
bright, unexpected aquamarine. In contrast to his drab brown
cloak and weather-browned skin, there was something almost
frivolous about the color, as if it had been an oversight on
the part of nature.
There was nothing frivolous about the way the Assistant
Prefect of Police was looking her up and down.
There was nothing about her appearance to give her away,
Laura reassured herself, fighting to keep the prickles of
fear at bay. They had been very careful of that. Her attire
was all French-made, from the scuffed half-boots on her feet
to the hairpins driving into her scalp. Her real wardrobe,
the wardrobe she had worn in her past life as Laura Grey,
governess, as well as her small cache of books and personal
keepsakes, had been left in Sussex, in a trunk in a box room
in a house called Selwick Hall, sixteen years of her life
boxed away and reduced to three square feet of storage
space. There was no more Laura Grey, governess. Only Laure
Griscogne.
Governess.
Ah, well.
Whatever Andre Jaouen saw passed muster. Well, it should,
shouldn't it? French or English, she looked like the
governess she was. "Apologies for keeping you waiting. I can
only spare you a few moments."
As apologies went, it wasn't much of one. Still, the fact
that he had offered one at all was something. Laura inclined
her head in acknowledgment. Servility had come hard to her,
but she had had many years in which to learn it. "I am at
your convenience, Monsieur Jaouen."
"Not mine," he said, with a sudden, unexpected glint of
humor. Or perhaps it was only a trick of the watery light,
reflected through rain streaked-windows. "My children's. The
agency told me that you have been a governess for... how
many years was it?"
She would have wagered her French-made hairpins that he
knew exactly how many, but she supplied the number all the
same. "Sixteen."
That much was true. Sixteen excruciating years. She had
been sixteen herself when she began, stranded and friendless
in a foreign country. She had lied with all the efficiency
of desperation, convincing the woman at the agency that she
was twenty. She had scraped back her hair to make herself
look older and ruthlessly scowled down anyone who dared to
question it. Mostly, they hadn't. Hunger and worry did their
work quickly. By the end of that first, desperate month, she
could easily have passed for older than she claimed. Her
upbringing might have been unconventional, but it had left
her unprepared for the shock of true poverty.
"Sixteen years," her prospective employer repeated.
Through the spectacles, he submitted her to the sort of
scrutiny he must have given dodgy witnesses in the
courtroom, as though he could fright out lies by the force
of his look alone. "Think again, Mlle Griscogne."
Laura pinched her lips together. Sixteen years ago, she
had learned that the expression made her look older, more
reliable. People expected their governess to look like a
prune who had just been sucking on a lemon.
By now it came naturally.
She had to succeed in this mission. Had to, had to.
Anything rather than face being a governess forever, feeling
her face freeze a little more every year into a caricature
of herself until there was no Laura left beneath it.
For the next few months, she would be the very best
governess she could be if only it meant, please God, that
she never had to be a governess again.
Laura squared her shoulders beneath her sodden pelisse,
steeling herself against the urge to shiver. "I assure you,
M. Jaouen," she said frostily, "my experience as a governess
is quite as extensive as the agency has claimed. I provide
elementary instruction in composition, literature,
Scripture, history, geography, botany, and arithmetic. I am
proficient in Italian, German, English, and the classical
languages. I teach music, drawing, and needlework."
Andre Jaouen's eyebrows lifted. "All that in the same day?"
Laura's brows drew together. Was he joking? It was hard
to tell. Either way, it was always better to ignore such
lapses in one's employers. If they weren't joking, they
tended to take offense at the assumption of levity. If they
were, it was dangerous to encourage them.
The reflection helped settle her nervous stomach. She
felt on firmer ground here, putting a prospective employer
in his place. She had played this game before.
"I tailor the curriculum to fit the specific needs and
interests of the children in my care," she said loftily.
"Not all subjects are appropriate in every situation."
Andre Jaouen made an impatient gesture. "No, of course
not. I doubt my son would appreciate your tutelage on
needlework. You are free to start immediately?" At her look
of surprise, he said, briskly, "I wish to have this business
dealt with as quickly of possible. Your references were
excellent."
Of course, they had been. The Pink Carnation employed
only the best forgers.
Was it just her nerves acting up again, or had that been
too easy? Shouldn't he question her about her references?
Ask her more about her teaching methods? Tell her about the
children?
"Mlle Griscogne?"
"Yes," she said hastily. "I can begin whenever you like."
Andre Jaouen motioned her forward, already in motion
himself, making short work of the distance to the double
doors through which Laura had entered. "I have two children,
Gabrielle and Pierre-Andre. Gabrielle is nine. Pierre-Andre
is five. Until now, they have been with their grandparents
in Nantes. This is their first time in Paris." He spoke as
he walked; direct, economical, no effort wasted.
"And their prior education?" Laura lengthened her stride
to keep up, her wet skirts tangling in her legs as she
followed him past a wide staircase, the marble balustrade
gone a dull gray with grime. An empty pedestal stood on the
landing, marking the place where a statue must once have
stood. Tapestries still lined the walls, but they hung
crookedly, and several bore poorly mended gashes.
"Their grandfather taught them at home."
Laura did her best to suppress a grimace. Fairy stories.
Basic reading. Arithmetic. If she were lucky. She would have
to start from the very beginning with them. The boy,
Pierre-Andre, was nearly of an age to be sent off to school.
She would have to bring him up to the level of other boys
his age.
No, she wouldn't. The thought brought Laura up short. If
she did her job well, she wouldn't be around long enough for
it to matter. She had been thinking like a governess again,
falling back into the old patterns.
Jaouen was still talking, words marshalling themselves
into neat, economical sentences. Behind the measured
cadences, Laura could detect just a hint of a Breton burr.
There was no faux-aristocratic ostentation there, no
pretense. "Your wages will be paid quarterly. Room and board
will be provided to you. Ah, Jean." That last had been
directed to the gatekeeper. "Tell Jeannette to find Mlle
Griscogne a room. Something near the children."
Jean and Jeannette? His servants couldn't be named Jean
and Jeannette. It was too much like something out of the
Comedia del'Arte. Did the still unseen Jeannette run around
in a parti-colored costume smacking Jean over the head with
a big stick, like Pierrot and Pierrette? Perhaps they were
spies, too. If so, one would have thought they could have
come up with better aliases.
"Jeannette is the nursery maid," Jaouen said, in an aside
to her. Without waiting for them to be handed to him, he
scooped up his own hat and cane off a marble-topped table by
the door. "Jeannette will see you settled and make you known
to Gabrielle and Pierre-Andre. If you need anything, either
Jean or Jeannette will see to it."
With a nonchalant push, Jean the gatekeeper shoved open
the door, letting in a blast of damp air. The rain looked as
though it were contemplating turning to snow. The icy
pellets stung Laura's cheeks as she followed Jaouen to the
door. She was still wearing her pelisse, and her pelisse was
still just as wet as it had been when she had entered; the
entire interview, such as it was, had taken all of ten
minutes. Ten minutes to embark on the most dangerous gamble
of her life.
A carriage was waiting in the courtyard, plain and black
like the cloak draped over Jaouen's shoulders, the horses
pawing impatiently at the cobbles.
She had clearly been dismissed. And hired. She had been
hired, hadn't she?
Jean-the-gatekeeper gave her a disapproving look as she
followed her new employer out under the porte cochere. Or
perhaps that was just his normal expression. "I will need to
fetch my things," Laura said desperately. "And settle my
account at my current lodgings."
Reaching into his waistcoat pocket, Andre Jaouen took out
a purse and shook several coins out into his palm. He thrust
what looked to her untutored eyes like a substantial sum in
her direction.
"An advance," he said impatiently, when Laura looked at
him uncomprehending. "On your wages."
Laura's back stiffened. "My own funds are more than
adequate to settle my current obligations."
He looked at her curiously, then shrugged, returning the
coins to his pocket. "Will you bite my head off if I offer
you the use of the carriage?"
He cocked an eyebrow, waiting for her reply. There it was
again, that glimmer of what might be humor. Laura saw
nothing to laugh about.
"There is no need, sir," she said coolly. "My lodgings
are not far and I am more than accustomed to managing for
myself."
Jaouen eyed her speculatively, his glasses glinting in
the light of the carriage lamps. "I can see that." And then
he ruined it by adding, "I wouldn't hire you if I thought it
were otherwise. My occupation is a demanding one. I have no
time for domestic squabbles."
That had put her in her place. Between fear and relief,
she felt almost giddy. "Squelching squabbles is one of my
particular specialities."
Jaouen forbore to comment. With the air of someone
getting done with a bad job, he continued, "You may be
troubled from time to time by my wife's cousin, who persists
under the unfortunate delusion that my home is his own.
Ignore him."
Ah, one of those, was he? Once, she might have claimed
that she wasn't the sort of governess to inflame a young
man's lusts. But she had learned the hard way that, after a
certain degree of inebriation, all it took was being female,
and sometimes not even that. She had also learned that
employers seldom took kindly to their elder sons, nephews,
or houseguests being hit over the head with a warming pan,
candlestick, or chamber pot. Laura appreciated both the
warning, and the implicit authorization to do whatever she
needed to do.
It was comforting to know that the intimidating Monsieur
Jaouen had an Achilles heel, even if that Achilles heel was
only a cousin by marriage. It made him more human, somehow.
And human meant fallible. Fallible was good, especially for
her purposes.
"I will. Sir."
Jaouen nodded brusquely, her message received and
accepted. Hat in one hand, cane in the other, he started for
the carriage. At the last moment, just beyond the protective
cover of the awning, Jaouen jerked his head back over his
shoulder.
Laura shot to attention.
"Why did you leave your last position?" he asked abruptly.
"My pupil married." If he had hoped to shock her into an
admission, he would be disappointed. Her pupil had married
in June, leaving her once more without a situation. The
family had been kind; they had kept her on through the
wedding, but there was a limit to the charity she was
willing to accept. "She had no need for a governess anymore."
But the Pink Carnation had had need of an agent.
Rain pocked Jaouen's glasses as he treated her to another
long, thoughtful look. He held his hat in one hand but
didn't bother to put it on, despite the rivulets of rain
that silvered his hair and dampened his coat. "An
occupational hazard?"
Laura permitted herself a grim smile. "One of the most
hazardous."
She had never thought much of matrimony herself—her
parents had set no favorable example—but it had been
distinctly unsettling to make a place for oneself only to be
flung out into the world again. And again and again. Some of
them, the sentimental ones, sent letters for a time, but
those generally tailed off within the first year, as the
daily demands of the domestic state outweighed sentimental
recollections of the schoolroom.
"You shan't have to worry about that with Gabrielle. Yet."
She wouldn't be around long enough to worry about that.
"Indeed," she agreed. Noncommittal replies were always
best in dealing with employers. Yes, sir; no, sir; indeed,
sir. It came out by rote.
Jaouen clapped his hat onto his head. "Tomorrow morning,"
he said. "The children will be expecting you."
Jean, the gatekeeper, slammed the door shut behind him as
he swung up into the carriage. The horses' nostrils flared,
their breath steaming in the cold air, as the coachman
clucked to them, setting them into motion. Through the
rapidly misting glass of the window, Jaouen was nothing more
than a silhouette, a blurred image in tans and browns.
That was it. She had done it. She had really done it.
Blood surged to Laura's cheeks and fingertips, sending a
rush of warmth tingling through her despite the freezing
wind gluing her soaking skirts to her legs. Whatever else
came of it, the first step was accomplished; she was a
member of Jaouen's household. She was in.
Between the rain and the sound of hooves against the
cobbles, Laura could just barely hear her new employer call
out his instructions to the coachman.
"To the Abbaye Prison. As fast as you can."
Laura swallowed hard, turning her face away from a sudden
gust of wind that tore at her bonnet strings and snatched
away the very breath from her throat.
Oh, she was in all right. Way over her head.
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