“Mademoiselle,” the emperor called to her, even as the next vendor was stepping forward seeking patronage. “Please feel free to return to my palace and personally bring me more wine whenever you can.”
Again, she thanked him, hardly able to believe her good fortune. Nodding to Michel, they departed the reception room and made their way back downstairs to servant’s exit.
Outside the double doors, still in the crush of other hopefuls, they grabbed each other’s hands, forming a small circle, and stared at one another with large smiles.
“Bravo,” said Michel.
“It was the wine,” she said, “not me.”
“Do you think Bonaparte would have invited Jacques to return ‘whenever he can,’” Michel asked, “or me?” He hooked a thumb at his own burly chest. Then he broke out in loud guffaws.
Shrugging at his silliness, Serena turned to leave, and her gaze landed upon Monsieur Branley. Against all reason and commons sense, the Englishman was dressed as a French baker and holding a basket of loaves.
Dear God! Did he not understand the risk?
“I’ll see you later,” she told her grandfather’s delivery man. “I’ve noticed a friend with whom I wish to speak. Please tell Pépère how well it went, yes?”
When Michel had left, she bit her lip. Monsieur Branley was shuffling ever closer to the door that would gain him entrance to the emperor.What if he were going to try something drastic?He’d confessed to being armed before. Perhaps he was unhinged and had a gun in his basket, hidden under the bread.
Approaching closer, she noticed how he glanced around in a continuous motion, surveying those around him. When he saw her, he flinched.
“I didn’t mean to startle you,” she said, as his eyes narrowed at her.
“You didn’t,” he said, “but I thought you had left already. What are you doing here?”
“I offered Renault wine to the emperor. The question is, what on earth are you doing here?”
He glanced at his basket, and his cheeks took on a ruddy stain. After all, she knew despite his loose cloth cap, his apron, and his baggy coat over it that he was most assuredly not a baker.
“I am helping out a friend,” he said finally. “I must get the emperor to accept this bread ... and me,” he added.
“A friend?” she asked doubtfully.
“He is sick, but he can bake very well,” Monsieur Branley added quickly.
“Which bakery?”
“Boulangerie Marineau,” he said without hesitation.
“It is not a small bakery,” she pointed out. “Didn’t they have someone else to represent them?”
“They areallsick,” he said defiantly.
“That may be, but you cannot go in there.”
“I can and I will,” he told her calmly, although he lifted his chin to a stubborn angle.
Since he was so tall, this only put his eyes farther from hers, and she wanted to stare into them until he understood the risk. For whatever reason, it terrified her that he was performing such a perilous masquerade.
Serena hated to break it to him in case he really didn’t know and was insulted, but her words might save his life.
“You do not have the worst accent I’ve ever heard,” she said, “but it certainly marks you as an Englishman. Here in Paris, we say,‘Tu parles Français comme une vache Espagnole.’”
“I speak French like a Spanish cow?” he repeated with his poor accent.
“Oui, monsieur. And the emperor will not be pleased to be approached by an English baker pretending to be Monsieur Marineau.”
Monsieur Branley nodded, as if he’d already accepted that fact.
