“Oh, yes. All is prepared.”
“Good. We will discuss that in a moment, when Jacques has left.” Thus she set Leblanc in his place. “He brings a letter I have been awaiting. You will read it in a moment.”
“Is that necessary?” Leblanc frowned.
“It is always interesting to hear your opinions on the management of agents, Jacques.” Madame folded the letter. “I will think about this before I reply. I must consult Soulier.” She dropped it to the blotter on the writing desk.
Leblanc followed her gesture with cold eyes. “Tonight, then.”
“Not tonight. You need not concern yourself with this. If you wish, you may return to the amusements of the parlor. My women will see to you.”
“I am not amusing myself.” He stood up, brushing his sleeves, as if to dislodge the contempt Madame’s glance had left there. “I do not play with whores when the Republic is in turmoil. I am gauging the temper of the city. Important men come to your salon.”
“To play with my whores. Sordid, is it not? One trembles for the future of rational government. For Justine, I will repeat what I said before. No one in my household is available to you for your work. Not the scrub maid. Not the cat in the stables. No one.”
“You make a great fuss over a trifling matter.” Leblanc shrugged. “I would have returned the infant in an hour or two. Now I must detach experienced agents from other work to accomplish my business. You inconvenience everyone with your insistence on—”
“Do not approach members of my household, Jacques. If you sneak behind my back in my own house, you will find the door closed to you.”
“A thousand apologies,” he spread his hands theatrically and inclined his head, not hiding the smirk of triumph, “if I have trespassed.” All the time he peered beneath his lids at Madame, avid for some response. But he had not scratched the surface of Madame’s great composure.
“You disrupt my house with your intrigues. I will not have my people upset.” She spoke as one does to a tradesman who has made a delivery of inferior goods.
“I live to please you, Lucille.” He was not as skilled in sarcasm as he believed.
“Let us hope you continue to do so.”
This was how mortal enemies spoke to one another in the Secret Police. Threat and counter-threat. She watched Madame and hoped she would be half as subtle, someday.
Leblanc made a great business of taking his leave. He bent over Madame’s hand, then he took hers, giving himself the excuse to touch her. “My compliments to your small sister. She is delightful.”
There could be no reply to that.
She stood at the door of the parlor after he left to make certain he went down the stairs and did not loiter. Then she left the door open. A closed door invites eavesdroppers.
Madame had taken up a magnifying glass to examine the seal of the letter. “You have allowed him to discompose you.”
“He makes my skin crawl. I do not want him near Séverine.”
“It will not happen again. Babette was there in moments.” She set the magnifying glass aside. “For all his many faults, he does not molest children. His preference is for girls just come to womanhood. Like you.”
“I know. He would smirch her a little, because he cannot have me. In revenge.”
Memory struck like a spear. For an instant she felt men rutting on her body. Felt them smother her in their smell, poke their slimy tongues into her mouth. She was so sick with hate she could not breathe.
Madame stood and shook out her skirts, drawing the eye, breaking the hold of the past, bringing her back to the present, to the sunlight, to the pleasant parlor. To safety. “He will borrow a beggar child for his scheme and use one of the whores of the Palais Royale. It is what he intended from the first. He only sought out Séverine to torment you.”
“And to challenge you. I am surprised he dares. Many people have disappeared in the last few days.”
“To the general rejoicing of all. But you will not assist him to disappear, petite.”
With Robespierre dead, a great power struggle was under way for the control of the Police Secrète. For three nights Madame had gone into the streets alone and returned to the house late, in quiet triumph. Once, covered with blood. Several of the men who had vanished were Madame’s great enemies.
“I would be thoroughly careful, disposing of him, Madame. I will not be busy tomorrow, and I am very good with my gun.”
“You are admirably skilled, but I will not indulge you in that way.” It was gently said, but firmly. “Now, look here.” She took the letter from the desk and studied it a moment. “See how this has been opened? There is the smallest sign of misplacement in the resealing. Leblanc is purposefully insolent. I assume he has found a new patron.”
“Why should I not eliminate him for you? I have watched events long enough. I am ready to work.”
“Then understand the work I need you to do. My child, you are clever. You see the mind and heart of others. That is a weapon beyond compare. Leave poison and the knife to amateurs.” Startlingly, Madame chuckled. A warm, earthy sound. “You will find that making fools of men and plucking forth their secrets is more gratifying than killing them. One cannot, alas, rid the world of all of its Leblancs.”
“I would like to try. He looks at me and licks his lips. It makes me sick.”
“It gives him great satisfaction to know that.”
No one was more wise than Madame. “You are telling me to dissemble more skillfully.”
“You let him decide what you will feel. You delight him by showing your anger. Is that what you wish?”
“No.” How often had Madame told her to deal dispassionately with men?
“Leblanc is an open enemy. But he is vain, greedy, and predictable. As things stand, there will be one of the Jacobin party in that position. He is less dangerous than whoever might replace him.”
“I hate him.”
Madame went to look out the window, down into the courtyard. “If you allow it, hate will eat you hollow. It is not good to be hollow. Ah. He leaves. Come. Observe him as the bug he is.”
The front courtyard of the Pomme d’Or was bounded from the street by a high wall of square, biscuit-colored stone. The cobble was gray, crossed with lines of mud from coach wheels. A dozen orange trees in huge white planters stood at intervals against the wall, their green, shiny leaves glinting of silver where the afternoon sun hit. Leblanc strode away, stuffing his fingers into his gloves as he walked. It was a pleasure to see him this way, small and retreating.
“He develops a bald spot. How amusing.” Madame let the curtain fall back. “Let us speculate, you and I. What is Leblanc’s purpose in coming here to play annoying little games with my people? It was not to deliver that letter.”
This is what she teaches me. To be dispassionate. To consider this man as a problem of logic. “He tests you. He wants to know if I can be used to hurt you. He came for Séverine . . .” She thought of Leblanc near Séverine, and she could not be detached and calculating. Quite simply, she wanted to kill him. “He sought her out to see if she could be used to control you. Or me.”
“Now he knows.”
It was a hard lesson Madame set her. She swallowed. “I have allowed him to see that I am vulnerable. Because of that, I have put Séverine at risk.”
“I believe you have,” Madame said gravely. She understood. She kept her own daughter well hidden in the countryside, where she could not be used as blackmail or threat. “She would be safer out of Paris, where Leblanc and others like him cannot reach her. You know my friends who keep the school in Dresden would welcome you both. You would be with young girls your own age.”
The porter closed the gate behind Leblanc. What could one say? Only the truth. Madame would send her to play the innocent in some respectable school in Dresden. To live among giggling schoolgirls. To pretend to be heedless and wholesome. “I have not been a young girl for a long time.”