Or possibly, it was the blankets Brewster wrapped me in and the brandy he poured down my throat once he’d bundled me into Denis’s carriage. He got me home without Captain Vernet waylaying me, and left me with Bartholomew, who stripped me of my wet clothes, plunged me into a hot bath, and then shoveled me directly into bed.
Moreau did not fare as well. I heard, via a letter from Madame Paillard, that the poor fellow, whom we’d conveyed to her home in the Presqu’île, was quite ill. He had swallowed a quantity of river water, which at that point was none too clean, and had to contend with the cuts Madame Jourdain had inflicted on him.
As neither Donata nor Brewster would let me out of bed for the next several days, despite my insistence, I could only wish the man well.
A more pleasant aspect of my confinement was that Gabriella came to dote on me.
She arrived the day after my adventure, flushed and beautiful in her new matronly attire, to bring me a thick, very tasty soup. I did not at all like to think about what had put the pinkness in her cheeks or the flutter in her laugh. I would need to avoid Emile for a time.
Grenville had also caught the sniffles as he’d walked about in the rain, but he’d been well enough to visit me and explain how they’d come to be there to capture Madame Jourdain.
When Denis’s coachman had left Moreau and me in La Guillotière, the man had decided to report our whereabouts to Denis. He’d found Denis in his agent’s office on the plaza, Brewster and Grenville with him, where they’d paused in their search to wait out the rain. Once the man had explained that we’d rushed from the townhouse to La Guillotière, Grenville had insisted on sending for the gendarmes.
Denis and Brewster had proceeded to the bridge in the coach, but had to wait under shelter on the island side of the Rhône because of the storm. Once the rain and lightning began to ease, they’d crossed, sweeping up Vernet along the way, to find us climbing out of the water, and Madame Jourdain trying to flee.
Madame Jourdain had been arrested for Gallo’s murder and waited in the cells of the gendarmerie for her hearing before a magistrate. The gendarmes had found Madame Martin where I’d told Vernet she would be. Her wounds were being tended, and she’d live, but she too was under arrest for assaulting and abducting Signora Ruggeri.
Signora Ruggeri’s protective coachman had bundled her away somewhere, Grenville knew not where. Out of reach of Vernet, we both assumed.
Grenville ended his visit with well wishes from Marianne, and I took the opportunity to congratulate him on his upcoming offspring. Grenville thanked me with a mixture of pride and trepidation.
A few after this, I at last convinced Donata to allow me to go downstairs to the library.
I was penning a reply to another letter from Madame Paillard, which gave me the welcome news that Moreau had turned for the better, when Bartholomew announced that I had a visitor.
“Who is it?” I asked without looking up. If it was no one I wished to see, I could feign illness to avoid the encounter.
“It’s that actress,” Bartholomew replied. “Signora Ruggeri.” He held out her engraved card.
I raised my brows, laid aside my pen, took up the card, and followed him to the sitting room.
I noted when I entered that Signora Ruggeri had dressed plainly, in a narrow gown of dull brown without much ornamentation. She appeared subdued, as though she used the ensemble to avoid attention.
Signora Ruggeri surged to her feet when I entered. “Captain Lacey.” She bobbed a stiff curtsy. “I heard you were unwell.”
I bowed in return. “Only mildly. You seem to have fared better than I or Moreau did.”
She shrugged. “My coachman got me to a warm place quickly enough. Besides, I rarely take ill.”
“Yes, you told me you were used to boats and water. I suppose you gain a hardiness from them.”
“Possibly.” Signora Ruggeri lifted her chin. “I am returning to England.”
“To Manchester?”
“Mayhap. I met an actor-manager at Mrs. Grenville’s soiree who has offered me a place in his company. Mrs. Grenville put in a good word for me.”
“Did she?” I wondered if Marianne had done so from sympathy or from recognition of Signora Ruggeri’s talent. After all, she’d fooled an entire city for a time into believing she was someone she was not. “I am glad for you.”
“No more Signora Ruggeri from Padua.” She spoke the words in her florid Italian accent, then dropped it. “Miss Cooke I will be again.”
“Who knows what Miss Cooke might become?” I said. “You have much of your life ahead to find out.”
Signora Ruggeri appeared more resigned than excited about that prospect. “I must thank you and Colonel Moreau, twice—once for rescuing me from that awful river and then for convincing Captain Vernet that I had nothing to do with Vincenzo’s death.”
“You did not,” I said with conviction. “As you told me, that was all Madame Jourdain.”
“Poor Vincenzo.” Signora Ruggeri sank to the chair I gestured her to and laid her gloved hands in her lap. “He came after me that night at the comtesse’s chateau, because he was certain I had betrayed him. I’d taken all the papers out of his reach, you see.”
