Chapter 14
Light filled the room when Isobel awoke; she had no sense of what time it was but the morning looked well advanced.
She was alone in bed but not in the room.
A careful look showed Nathaniel seated at the small table nearby such that he faced her, bent over a piece of paper.
He wore trousers and boots, shirt open at the throat and his sleeves pushed partway up his forearms.
For this chance to watch him unawares she did not move, not wanting yet to reveal that she had woken.
With each slight movement of his head as he wrote, the light picked out slight glimmers of copper from the dark stubble on his cheeks and chin. He struck out a line on his paper, straight brows coming together in a slight frown before smoothing out again as he resumed writing.
Her eyes lingered on his hands. She’d have watched only them . . . but his pen stilled.
For a small stretch they merely looked at one another. How to break the silence? The only other man in whose bed she’d woken after having been intimate for the first time was Jamie, the morning after their wedding.
Nathaniel’s mouth curved, there and gone so fast she could almost have missed the smile had it not remained in his eyes. Unaccountably shy and hating that she felt that way, she tentatively returned the smile.
“I must attend to several tasks before my appointment with Baudelaire. Now you are awake, I will see to them.”
He had remained, then, so she wouldn’t wake up alone, after. He might have simply left with only a note to tell her his business, but he had not. It warmed her, that consideration.
“Amélie will be expecting you,” he added. “Do you know the way on your own?”
“I believe so. But if not, I will offer a coin to one of your boys downstairs to direct me.” He had pointed out several boys who could be trusted as messengers the first time she’d come to his rooms.
Nathaniel stood, his document evidently completed. “I will come to L’Orchidée later, and we will discuss plans for tonight.”
Had he decided she would go with him to Le Repaire after all? “I’ll go to Amélie shortly.” She stretched beneath the blanket and watched him as he wound his neckcloth and fastened the buttons on waistcoat and jacket.
He took up hat and greatcoat but paused before opening the door to turn and look at her again. When she offered him another shy smile, his own mouth curled up briefly once more.
Then he was through the door, shutting it softly behind him.
“And so you have come once more to challenge me.”
“I do believe the challenge will be yours,” Nate returned, settling into the seat opposite Baudelaire and signaling the waitress for wine. The chessboard was already set up, the black pieces on Nate’s side.
“I have chosen for myself the prerogative to open,” Baudelaire said. “It may be the only advantage I have.” They conversed in a similar vein for several minutes before dropping their voices.
Between moves, Nate slid a copy of Isobel’s notes from Frascati’s into Baudelaire’s sketchbook on the pretext of examining a sketch.
“I am at this point more interested in the other man who played at my table last night. Fournier is likely what he appears to be, although I have a colleague trailing him for another day or two to be certain.” He’d sent Pereira to follow Fournier.
Pereira was a native of Galicia who’d been recruited into Scovell’s Guides during the Peninsular War.
The British government still had plenty of uses during peacetime for former soldiers from the intelligence detachments, especially polyglots like Pereira and himself.
“I assume you do not mean the unfortunate student who tried his hand most inexpertly at playing cards.” Baudelaire pushed a pawn forward, keeping one finger atop it. “I am told he was very sick, after. Perhaps he will think twice in the future about gaming.”
“Perhaps.”
“Your antagonistic opponent was not known to my colleagues before last night. Charles Oberlin.” Baudelaire unwisely released the pawn.
In two moves he would have Baudelaire’s rook if Baudelaire wasn’t careful. “His accent marked him from elsewhere.”
“So does that of many in our fair city, but I take your point. We will for the moment consider that he is newly arrived.”
“He was there specifically to engage me,” Nate said bluntly. “And he made no secret of his interest in Isobel.”
“That, mon ami, could be said of more than just this Oberlin. But I collect you mean something beyond the usual appreciations of a man for an intriguing woman.”
Nate moved his bishop. “Aye, it felt like more than that.”
“I trust in your observations of this. I did not myself see him; he did not come to the other salon after his loss.”
“He did not take the loss gracefully.”
“It was described to me. Much can be inferred from how a man comports himself after a loss, oui?”
“Aye. Although after I turned down another game, he did not linger beyond verbally accosting Isobel before I’d risen from the table.” And laying a hand on her.
Baudelaire looked up from the board. “She is well? This I did not know, last night when we left.”
“Aye. But he mightn’t have managed even that, except Fournier held me up a moment.”
“In collusion with Oberlin?”
“No. In drunken appreciation for my win.”
Baudelaire grinned. “I heard it was most dramatic, your final hand.”
La dame de c?urs, the queen of hearts, wielding her power. “Given Oberlin’s cards, luck was with me more than skill on my last draw.”
“Your skill allows you to capitalize upon luck when it presents itself.” Baudelaire’s face was studious once more. By all appearances he was deeply invested in the chessboard. “So we must find out if we may, who is this Oberlin.”
“Aye. It wouldn’t surprise me if he is mixed up somehow in this business. It feels too coincidental otherwise.”
Baudelaire slid his rook forward. “I shall inquire further with colleagues. Did his accent suggest to you anything in particular?” He made a stricken noise when Nate moved one of his knights; rook or queen was now forfeit.
“A native speaker, I would say, perhaps with a German-flavored edge. He said he was in Paris for the family wine business for whatever that may be worth.”
He himself tried to keep threads of truth within his own disguises; it was harder to lose kernels of truth, and one’s deceptions were more convincing.
“Perhaps he is Alsatian. There is good wine from Alsace, if this part is true. We will consider this as one possible angle.” Baudelaire moved his queen to safety. “Your Isobel did well at Frascati’s.”
“Aye.” He decided not to argue that she was not his; Baudelaire would derive too much enjoyment from such a conversation.
“You go tonight to Le Repaire. Will she? If indeed M. Oberlin is, as you surmise, involved, already she is now deeper than anticipated.”
He wished it were not so, but it was undeniable. “I would rather not, as a matter of her own safety. Taking her tonight increases the likelihood she will be endangered. From a tactical standpoint, it makes sense, however.”
“This I also believe.”
Oberlin’s reaction to her had proved useful from an information-gathering standpoint. He could no longer treat it objectively, however. Having her in his bed was only part of it.
“She does not seem one to turn faint at adversity,” Baudelaire remarked.
No, she was very much not one to shrink away from adversity or a challenge.
“I will alert Chrysanthème to expect you,” Baudelaire said decisively. “She will be watchful for any need to assist you or Isobel.”
“So long as it may be rendered subtly.”
“She is extremely subtle, Chrysanthème, as causes dictate. She has been a better player in this game and for far longer than you or I.” Baudelaire paused.
“It is none of my business, mon ami, and you will tell me so . . .” He caught Nate’s eye.
“Me, I think nothing of being in this one’s bed or that one’s, whether for the game or not, so long as we’re both enjoying it.
For you, it is not so, to be so casual with women.
Do not allow this to distract you and place you in harm’s way. Your Isobel either.”
It wasn’t Baudelaire’s business, but he bit back a rebuke. Baudelaire meant well, and it was nothing he wasn’t already telling himself.
“Zut! I have lost another game.” Baudelaire tipped over his king in a show of disgust. He’d been trying futilely to get out of a trap for four moves.
Their conversation was concluded anyway.
Leaning closer as he stood, Baudelaire murmured, “I will send over a note if I discover anything before this evening about your less-than-gallant opponent of last night.” Briefly he gripped Nate’s wrist. “It is unnecessary that I instruct you to be careful, mon ami, but I do so anyway. There are some ugly currents that grow quickly stronger. I would not wish either you or Isobel pulled down beneath them.”
Ugly currents, yes, concealed within infinitely murky depths. He too hoped that neither he nor Isobel would be caught up in them without means of escape.
Amélie settled Isobel comfortably with coffee and a tray of food.
“I have had notes about last night, but I would hear from you your own thoughts. How did it go for you, the excursion?”
“I was rather daunted at first,” Isobel admitted, “but it was not so difficult as I had feared.”
Amélie nodded. “You are in your own way already used to the surreptitious gathering of information from your own mission these past months.”
“Still, I have never before played a role.” A role that now had more than a grain of truth to it . . .
“Oui, certainement,” Amélie agreed. “But you have for it native instincts, and you no longer must enact such measures alone. Did you discover anything of your sister?”
“I understood I was unlikely to learn anything of substance pertaining to Lucy. Nonetheless, I . . .” She swallowed against a sudden suggestion of tears. “No, nothing.”
“It is natural that you should feel this discouragement,” Amélie said gently.
“I do not even know if anything I learned was truly of any value to Nathaniel.”