“I’m not really here, I told you. Is it possible to keep this encounter quiet?” I glanced about. “It would be a pity to upset affairs of state.”
“But of course! You must be working with Napoleon.”
“Jefferson, actually.” That tidbit seemed innocent enough.
“It’s genius how you insert yourself. Without academic degree, birth, station, appointment, or accomplishment, you remain indispensable. I don’t pretend to understand it, but certainly you’re an inspiration.”
“It’s you who are the vanguard of knowledge.” I put the spyglass down and eyed the door. As much as I’d enjoy chatting about old times, this encounter could spoil everything.
“I suppose you’re rich, Ethan.”
“An investment here or there.”
“Do you need help? I have many contacts.”
“No, I’m fine.” I decided not to mention Astiza or Harry, in order to protect them. “A young woman is sharing my quarters.”
He smiled. “I am not surprised.”
“An aristocrat, actually. A comtesse, if Bonaparte brings back titles from before the revolution. Catherine Marceau must remain as secret as I am.”
“Marceau! But that’s genius. How clever of her.”
“Clever?”
“To use a name wiped out in the Terror.”
“She’s quite real, I assure. More than I can handle at times. Her parents died, but Catherine fled to England and has returned to see to her affairs.”
“So you say?” Jomard was turning the matter over in his mind. “I thought her dead. Did she fool us all? What a happy miracle! And now she’s back? No wonder you want to keep things quiet.”
“Indeed.” I was confused and wary.
“I remember her story of youth and beauty, throttled in her cell.”
“Throttled?”
“There was even a headstone before the cemeteries were emptied into the catacombs. But obviously it was a ruse to smuggle her to freedom.”
Had Catherine survived by faking her own death? Or was the comtesse in my apartment pretending to be someone she was not? “She’s very adroit,” I said, pretending to knowledge I didn’t have.
“Attractive?”
“Bewitching. So please, Jomard, not a word until I complete my assignment for Jefferson. I can succeed only if no one in Paris knows I’m here.”
“Your secrets are safe with me. You were never here, and Catherine was never alive.”
CHAPTER 6
Of course I’m dead,” Catherine told us later that day. “I have to be.”
“Do you mean you’re not really Catherine Marceau?”
“I mean my coffin was as empty then as my purse is now, but I depended on evil men thinking it full. Ethan, the only way to escape was to erase all record of myself. I used my beauty in ways I’m embarrassed to remember in order to persuade my captors to slip me across the Channel. It was planned so that I could return to Paris to conspire without family and friends seeking me out.”
“You faked your own death?”
“I faked my burial. It’s a shame the gravesite is gone. I heard strangers wept and left flowers.” Catherine turned to Astiza. “I assure you, madame, that my untimely death a dozen years ago protects your family today. I’d never insert myself into your home if old enemies could bring risk. The police won’t look for me because I don’t exist.”
“Why didn’t you tell us this before?”
She blushed, which was most uncharacteristic. “I admit to vanity. My titles were erased since I was believed dead, and so regaining them will be more complicated than I’ve admitted. I am truly a comtesse, but will have to prove it eventually.”
“Then you’re not really gossiping with royalist conspirators?” I asked.
“But I am, under any number of names. I’ve lost my outward identity but not my inner character and training. Please, life has been a struggle.”
I felt sorry for the girl, though I’m not sure my wife did. “I think it’s rather clever,” I said to encourage her. “Brave, too.”
“Don’t betray my secret. As long as I’m safely dead, I can move about the city before returning to shiver here.”
That was another complaint. Like all French apartments, ours was drafty, poorly heated, and ill designed, since builders refused to learn the superior carpentry of the Dutch and Germans. Our antechamber had to serve as our dining room, and it was so tight that the front door scraped our table. Our drawing room had a largely heatless fireplace that smoked—on chilly spring nights we drew chairs around like a campfire until our eyes watered—and our kitchen was little more than a cubby with a brick oven, a bowl for washing, and a tin bathtub shaped like a sabot shoe. We usually