Frustration and guilt at failing his friend once again mingled with the fear. He couldn’t feign a slow exit any longer without appearing odd. Avoiding the stares of several curious servants, he left the theatre, exiting at the same time as a few older patrons who were leaving early to avoid the crush.
The cool night air hit Avers’ cheeks sharply. Whatever clouds had hung over Paris in the day had rolled back to reveal a chorus of bright shining stars and a waning moon.
Lining the streets were various carriages awaiting their owners, and several chairman leaning against their conveyances hoping for patronage when the play let out. Flambeaux lined the road directly outside the theatre doors. By the light of them, the Tremaine driver must have seen him appear, for he whipped up his horses from standing some fifty yards down the road and approached.
Avers walked a little way towards the advancing carriage, leaving the entrance to the theatre behind, the walls of the Tuileries Palace rising up beside him.
“Good evening, Your Grace,” the driver said, drawing the horses to a halt and tipping his hat. “I hope the play was enjoyable?”
“Indeed, Hendricks, though I confess—” Avers was intending to offer a falsehood to explain his early departure from the play when movement in the corner of his eye arrested his attention.
The groom, who had leapt down from the back of the Tremaine carriage, was letting down the steps. But rather than ascending them, Avers turned to observe a small door in the impressive facade of the Palace open, and a small figure slip out.
No doubt some stagehand, or perhaps a bit player, was leaving for the night. Avers was just about to turn back to his driver when he recognised the individual leaving the theatre.
Mademoiselle Cadeaux.
Avers froze, praying she would not look his way, and God answered. The Frenchwoman turned in the opposite direction, pulling the hood of her cloak up, and walking with quick steps away from the well-lit theatre.
“I confess,” Avers continued, keeping his eyes fixed on the retreating figure of Mademoiselle Cadeaux while he finished addressing his driver, “I feel the need for fresh air and stretching my legs. It’s such a clear night, I’ll walk back to the Hôtel.”
“Are you sure, Your Grace? ’Tis three miles at least and these Parisians are—”
“I’m sure,” Avers said before his servant could scaremonger him. “Off home with you.”
Wherever Mademoiselle Cadeaux ventured alone, surely Avers would be safe to follow?
Stepping back to allow the groom to fold back up the steps, he nodded briefly to the driver in farewell. “If I’m not home by dawn you may send out a search party.”
The driver did not find his master’s dry words amusing, muttering something under his breath and shaking his head, but Avers was already turning on his heel and striking out after Mademoiselle Cadeaux.
Though Avers’ legs were long and his stride fast, catching up with the woman was surprisingly difficult. For someone so petite, she moved exceedingly quick, and made swift work of the rue de Rivoli.
Glancing back over his shoulder, Avers saw no one else walking in this direction. So she was indeed alone—no companion, no protection.
For a woman to be walking the streets alone at night was unheard of. Where could she be going?
Perhaps she was walking to her own lodgings. But wouldn’t she have left the theatre in the Comte’s company if so? Or at least called a chair?
Or was her purpose something more sinister? Was Vergelles using her to meet his contact? With so much at stake for Wakeford, Avers had to find out.
At first Mademoiselle Cadeaux followed the main thoroughfare, passing carriages and carts, the life of the city not having ceased with sunset. Not once did she glance sideways. Was she purposefully avoiding attention or were these familiar sights to her?
Avers kept his distance. Fortunately, her rapid steps meant he had no fear of overtaking her. But still, without the distraction of crowds if she looked back she might recognise him.
Thankfully his valet had pressed the heavy roquelaure cloak upon him this evening, expressing his fear that the drop in temperature might otherwise trouble his master. It would do much to obscure Avers’ fine clothes and figure should Mademoiselle Cadeaux turn around. And his valet had been right—he usually was about the weather—for the clear night had brought with it a biting breeze and it nipped at Avers’ cheeks and gloved hands.
After a quarter of an hour on the same path, his quarry turned south towards the river. Before long the centre of the city revealed itself. The Seine’s wide waters stretched out ahead, reflecting the stars above and the lantern lights along its banks. Barges of cargo to feed, clothe and entertain the city dwellers flowed incessantly back and forth along the river even at this time of night, struggling to keep up with the burgeoning metropolis.
Up ahead the small figure of Mademoiselle Cadeaux wove in and out of the few other individuals still on the streets, cloaked head down, avoiding comment or contact.
Avers still had no idea where she was going. Wakeford had told him that the Comte, along with the majority of Polite Society, resided in Faubourg Saint-Germain. That was south of the river—which had appeared to be the direction they were taking—but now she had turned east. She was not going to the Comte’s residence, nor her own which Avers supposed would be near her benefactor.
The Pont Neuf rose out of the landscape ahead with its wide arches springing across the waters of the Seine. As they approached, Avers heard the street sellers who had set up shop on either side of the wide bridge’s road, trying to get their last few sales of the night before packing up.
Pulling his hat down as low as he could on his brow, and his collar up high above his chin, he hid his face and fine clothes from others. While the diamond in his lace cravat was safely hidden, his shoe buckles were exposed—he only hoped they did not draw attention by catching the light of the lanterns dotted here and there along the path.
The sight of his own kind was now a dim memory. They had disappeared almost as soon as he’d left the theatre and now those that were out were of the middling and lower sort. Avers walked as far from the sellers’ booths as he could without entering the middle of the road and risking collision with a carriage.
Gaining the end of the bridge without notice, he stepped onto the Île de la Cité, the ancient island that rose up in the middle of the Seine, and home to Notre-Dame, Louis IX’s Saint-Chapelle, the Parlement of Paris and the Conciergerie.
The small island also housed a great deal of the Parisian poor and was no place for a woman to be walking alone at night.
His suspicions heightened. Was she meeting someone? Perhaps about the stolen papers? Why else would she risk her safety in such a fashion if not for some pressing reason?
After only a few moments walking the main street that encircled the north of the island, Mademoiselle Cadeaux turned towards its centre, slipping into a narrow street intersecting the central buildings. Avers followed and all at once the atmosphere changed.
Gone was the grand architecture of the recent century and the cool river air with it. Small, uneven residential dwellings crowded in around him, the clear sky reduced to a small strip overhead, and the smell of humanity living in close quarters rising up.
Only a few lone torches flickered here and there, the darkness creeping in and threatening in its intensity. What light there was cast by the flames came and went. Unreliable. Unnerving.
Underfoot, Avers could feel something slimy, his feet slipping on the uneven cobbles, and the smell became acrid. The only saving grace in this place was the sweet scent of wood smoke, though it warred with the stronger, nastier smells, and never truly won out.
What on earth was Mademoiselle Cadeaux doing in such a place? And if she was involved with the missing papers, was she acting on instructions from the Comte, or on her own accord?
The sound of something crashing nearby made Avers jump. He remembered with regret the duelling pistols he’d left in the Hôtel du Tremaine. That had been a mistake.
When nothing more calamitous happened, Avers put it down to a clumsy housewife. Quiet resumed in the alley and he continued on, wondering if the reason Wakeford hadn’t found the man responsible for stealing secrets from his offices, was because he wasn’t looking for a man at all.
Up ahead Mademoiselle Cadeaux stopped. Avers ducked into a doorway on the same side of the street, as far away as he could get from the nearest torch, and watched as the woman he’d been following knocked on one of the doors in the warped walls.
After a time, it was opened by someone Avers assumed to be an old man judging by his voice. A moment later a second door opened on the opposite side of the street and Avers heard a woman call out softly. The old man replied in the affirmative.
There was the sound of items being moved around inside the woman’s house, then a light filtered into the dark alley, as she reappeared holding an oil lamp. She had a shawl that she held tightly wrapped around thin shoulders and Avers took her to be little more than eighteen. She smiled warmly at her visitor, a tooth missing in the left-hand side of her mouth, and Avers heard her greet Mademoiselle Cadeaux by name.
A quiet conversation in murmured French took place between the trio and then Mademoiselle Cadeaux handed a small bag to the young woman.
“Merci, merci, you are so kind,” she said, tapping her forehead and curtseying several times.
Mademoiselle Cadeaux murmured something in return and then the young woman began walking slowly in Avers’ direction.
He pressed himself back against the doorway in which he sheltered, every fibre in his being tense, not even daring to breathe. Just a moment before he thought she would come upon him, she stopped at another door and knocked.
He could see her clearly now, and reckoned her to be even younger than his first assumption, perhaps no more than fifteen.
The door upon which she’d knocked was opened a crack and then, on seeing her, the inhabitant opened it a little wider.
“Bonsoir, Jeanne. Mademoiselle Cadeaux has come as she promised,” said the young woman. “She has gifts for us. Magnificent gifts.”
