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The Duc frowned. “Your voice is not as I remembered. You had seemed familiar; now I think I don’t know you at all.”

Not know Mab, after offering a slip on the shoulder? Perhaps the blow to his head had indeed unhinged the Duc. Barbary said, “You must not excite yourself, m’—Edouard!”

He touched his bandaged brow. “If only I could remember. There must be some remedy for my forgetfulness—other than another blow to the head! You must help me, ma’mselle.”

Barbary would have liked very much to help the Duc. He was a singularly charming man. And perhaps not so forgiving as she had thought. “You have remembered how you came to be injured?” she inquired delicately.

“I have not forgotten what you told me.” The Duc closed his eyes. “About the assault. I wish you would tell me what you are keeping from me.”

Barbary wished so also. What story had Mab told the Duc? Here was Barbary’s opportunity to make up to Mab for that accursed hussar. “You know me very well indeed, Edouard,” she said huskily.

The Duc’s eyes flew open. “Ah?”

Barbary clasped her hands to her breast. “Remember, you must not excite yourself. Ah, the water.” Barbary removed herself to the stove, where she prepared a cup of chocolate and a plate of sausage and cheese.

“
Merci,”
said the Duc when she presented him with the food. “First you save me from assault, now you prepare for me a feast. Whatever else you may be to me—curse my laggard memory!—you are indeed my angel.”

Saved him, had Mab? Barbary was impressed by her cousin’s ingenuity. What other clankers had she told? “A poor feast, but all we have. These are hard times.”

The Duc reached for the chocolate. His hand shook so badly that Barbary helped him drink from the cup. “You must not try to do too much too soon. Recall that you have been injured badly and must allow yourself time to heal.”

The Duc abandoned all efforts to hold the cup and leaned back among the pillows. “I am not a good patient, I fear. Tell me about yourself, Mistress Mab.  Are you an artist as well as a Jacobin?”

Barbary was startled. “A Jacobin? Who told you that?”

“Now which of us has the missing memory?” The Duc’s smile was fond, though weak. “You told me so yourself. You told me that I also was a Jacobin.”

“Ah.” Why the devil had Mab done that? “So I did. My papa was the artist. This was his studio. I am an artist’s model. But you already knew that, I think.”

“Did I?” The Duc again looked puzzled. “So I have an interest in art. Will you show me some of your papa’s work?”

Here was a pretty pickle! Barbary glanced around the cluttered studio. “There is little left—I sold most to pay the rent.”

“Then show me what little is left.” For a man so weak, the Duc possessed a very strong will. “Please.”

“Very well, if it will amuse you.” Barbary approached the stack of canvases propped against the wall. One by one she displayed them to the Duc. He looked startled, as Barbary was herself; the canvases depicted various still lifes, very fancifully drawn. So fancifully drawn, in fact, that it took a great leap of imagination to recognize a slice of cheese or an open book.

The Duc eyed the canvas. “Interesting,” he murmured.

Barbary felt defensive. “I did not say that my papa was a
great
painter,” she said, and stacked the canvases back against the wall.

“You must not apologize!” chided the Duc. “The paintings are, ah, very original. I should like to see more of this work.”

What a kind gentleman he was. Even to Barbary’s inexperienced eye the paintings were very bad. But they had diverted the Duc from questions about his injury, and for that Barbary could only be glad. She approached the easel that stood by the table and turned it toward the Duc, then flung back the cloth that covered it. He blinked.
“Miraculeux!”
he said.

Miraculous, was it? Barbary walked around the easel to take a better look. She squinted at the canvas. Perhaps from a distance it would be more clear. And so it was, a little bit. Barbary thought she might be looking at the Duc’s very divan. What was sprawled on the divan? A man? A woman? Perhaps a very large dog?

The Duc would overtax himself severely if he sought to say more kind things about this particular work of art. Barbary sat down in the chair near the divan. “If you are a student of art, Edouard, you will surely have seen the treasures of the Louvre.”

“The Louvre?” The Duc, with apparent difficulty, removed his gaze from the easel. “I do not recall.”

“Perhaps I may refresh your memory.” Here was an innocuous topic of conversation. As Barbary fed the Duc the rest of his chocolate, she cudgeled her own memory for what she had read in the newspaper accounts and droned on about the various exhibits. It was not long before her companion fell asleep again, as evidenced by his gentle snores.

Barbary leaned back in her chair. The Duc was very charming, very gallant even in his enfeebled state. Mab must be deranged. Better to be set up as a high-class gentleman’s companion, surely, than to exist in poverty.

All was not yet lost. Barbary had been especially nice to the Duc, on her cousin’s behalf. Then when Mab was horrid, he might not be so dismayed.

Barbary realized that she was plotting to play Cupid. And why not? Just because she had forsworn romance herself didn’t mean she thought everyone should do the same. Quite the opposite. Barbary thought again of Lord Grafton and of the philandering Conor, who had wasted no time in inviting his wife’s own cousin to tread the primrose path, and wished that she might wring his neck.

She wished many things. Such as that the infernal commotion below stairs would cease. Barbary was in no mood to spin further taradiddles to deceive the Duc.

The commotion did not disturb his gentle snores or the less melodious tones of the occupant of the battered armchair. Barbary grasped her manservant by the shoulders and shook him. “Tibble! Tibble, wake up!”

Tibble did so reluctantly. He stared at his mistress in some confusion, uncertain whether it was Barbary who bent over him, or the vituperative Mab.

“What is the matter with you, Tibble?” she demanded, and shook him again. “Have your wits gone wandering?”

His mistress it was, then. Tibble sighed with relief. “Miss Barbary, what’s to do?”

Barbary released him. “That is precisely what I wish to know, you lazybones. Listen!”

Tibble listened, heard raised voices and shouts. He left the chair to look out the window. The voices were coming not from the street but from the building below. Cautiously, he opened the door and peered down the stairs. Tibble was not yet entirely returned from the land of nod. Left alone in the studio with the pan of hot chocolate he had laboriously prepared—a good job he’d done of it, moreover; only the most persnickety of people would have remarked that it smelled burned—he’d sunk down in the chair. His nerves had been in a sad way as result of recent events. Laudanum was said to be very good for shattered nerves. Tibble had raised the cup and drunk.

Now he stepped cautiously on the staircase. It was not what he liked, not at all, but Miss Barbary had wished him to spy out the lay of the land. Warily, he advanced step by step. And then he retreated, very quickly indeed.

Barbary was standing by the easel when Tibble flew back into the room and slammed the door shut. She looked up in surprise. Tibble’s face was pale and beaded with sweat, his breathing labored. She reached for her vinaigrette.

He pushed it away. “The fat’s in the fire now, Miss Barbary!” Tibble gasped. “The police are searching the house!”

Chapter Fourteen

The Gendarmerie were indeed searching the building, slowly and methodically, in the process causing considerable distress to the occupants of the various apartments, under the sharp-eyed supervision of Colonel Laveran. The colonel had not achieved his rank without good reason: He was known to be dogged and incorruptible in the execution of his duties.

Colonel Laveran always got his man. Or woman, as the case most often was. The colonel possessed a very suave manner, and an abundance of charm—charm that he was deliberately withholding from Madame Gabbot, who refused to allow him to conduct his search unchaperoned, and even followed him up the steep flight of stairs that led to the very top of the house. Very dark those stairs were too. A body might fall and break his neck. Colonel Laveran stifled an uncharitable wish that the unaccomodating Madame Gabbot might do so. He knocked at the door.

There was no response. Madame Gabbot’s nose twitched like a hungry rabbit that has sniffed a carrot. The colonel knocked again.

This time the door was opened, by a very superior individual. “Yes?” he inquired in tones of ice.

“I regret.” Colonel Laveian was all charm. “There is a fugitive from justice at large. We have reason to think he may be in this neighborhood, perhaps hiding in this very building. Therefore, we conduct a search.”

“You do, do you?” The superior individual looked down his nose. “And just who might you be?”

“Allez!”
broke in Madame Gabbot, for whom it was very difficult, if not impossible, to stay silent for long. “One might ask the same of you. Ma’mselle Foliot has sufficient difficulty in paying her rent; it is almost always late. Yet she can hire herself a so-superior manservant.” She nudged the colonel. “Something here, it smells like the stale fish.”

Colonel Laveran required no assistance in the performance of his duties. He ignored the concierge. “We are the Gendarmerie,” he said to the manservant who still blocked the door. “It is our function to assist the local prefect of police to maintain order. We answer to the Minister of War. It is all very different from your English system, eh?”

At mention of his homeland, the manservant did not unbend. “It is hardly my place to deal with the police,” he said dismissively. Having squelched the colonel’s attempts at familiarity, he then fixed Madame Gabbot with a haughty eye. “The family didn’t think it right for Miss Mab to be alone in Paris, her being a young woman of good birth. I was sent to see she came to no harm.”

The manservant made it sound as if Frenchmen used young Englishwomen instead of foxes for the hunt. Colonel Laveran said, “We wish to cause your mistress no distress. It is merely that we must search. An escaped Jacobin is thought to be in the neighborhood. Have you seen such? A handsome devil, with black curls and green eyes, and the slipperiness of an eel.”

The manservant shook his head. Did he look relieved? “There’s been no one like that here. Nor is it likely there would be. Miss Mab being a respectable female.”

Upon hearing this declaration, Madame Gabbot snorted, earning herself disapproving glances from both Colonel Laveran and the servant. She shrugged.

“I’m sure you are correct,” Colonel Laveran said soothingly, “and that you have not seen the fugitive. But he is diabolical, this one. We must conduct our search. I cannot allow my men to depart until we have done so,
tu comprends.”

The manservant comprehended. He stepped aside. Colonel Laveran was thus privileged to glimpse the artist at work. She stood at her easel, palette in hand. Over her clothes she wore a paint-daubed smock. On one cheek was a daub of Prussian blue.

As the soldiers entered the studio, she turned and scowled. The manservant said somewhat unnecessarily, “Miss Mab don’t care to be disturbed at her work.”

Nor did Madame Gabbot care to be interrupted, which she had been, at her nap. However, the advent of the Gendarmerie had enlivened an otherwise tedious afternoon. She had derived a certain entertainment from watching her various tenants react to the intrusion. It was, naturally, inconceivable that she should allow the soldiers to rampage unsupervised through her house. She had especially looked forward to seeing Ma’mselle Foliot quake in her little boots.

To Madame Gabbot’s disappointment, Ma’mselle Foliot did no such thing. She merely glowered at the intruders, then returned her attention to her easel. With great concentration she applied brush to palette.

Madame Gabbot could not contain her curiosity. She moved forward and peered at the canvas. “Dreadful!” she observed. “And who is that on the divan?”

Well she might ask. Colonel Laveran was also curious. He moved closer to the divan. The gentleman in question was garbed very eccentrically in a toga, and wore a large amount of theatrical paint. A laurel wreath was perched rakishly upon his brow. He appeared to be sleeping, or perhaps passed out. A cluster of plaster grapes and an overturned jug lay near his outflung hand.

“Miss Mab’s model.” The manservant looked anxious now. “And we would appreciate it very much if you didn’t disturb his pose.”

Colonel Laveran had no wish to disturb the artist in her labors. He had already satisfied himself on two major points: the togaed Roman was not Gabriel Beaumont, and Ma’mselle Foliot appeared to be suffering no adverse effects as result of a gunshot. Granted, she fit the description of Gabriel’s accomplice, glimpsed fleeing the cafè, but so did any number of young women currently residing in Paris. For good measure, not that he expected to discover anything of use to him, Colonel Laveran instructed his men to search the room.

Madame Gabbot turned her head sideways, the better to regard the canvas, which to her eye bore no resemblance to reality, although if she squinted very hard she could make out the divan.
“Barbare,”
she muttered disapprovingly. Ma’mselle Foliot looked startled, she could not imagine why. “Since you have your servant living here, you will expect to pay more rent.”

Colonel Laveran had satisfied himself that all was as it should be, although a certain amount of discussion was inspired by the twenty-five different kinds of rifles and carbines and pistols found in the studio, until it was determined that the vast majority of this armament would not work. Himself, he would not care to live in such a clutter; but then, he was no
bohème.
Colonel Laveran had in the few moments of their acquaintance conceived an admiration for Ma’mselle Foliot. So fierce, so unapproachable—she was a veritable wildcat.

He approached the easel. She turned on him a glare of such proportions that he fell back a pace. “A thousand pardons for the disturbance, Ma’mselle Foliot.” He gestured for his men to quit the room.