‘Napoleon’s emblem is the bee, the symbol of hard work. All the Bonapartists wear it.’ As Mme Meynard answered her, Jane felt as if a thousand slipknots of glamour had just shifted and revealed a new pattern.

Anne-Marie wore a pendant of a honeybee.

It had been given to her by Lieutenant Segal, who wore the tricolour cockade of Napoleon. Jane’s breath caught in her throat. It did not seem possible that M. Chastain could have brought a Bonapartist into his house . . . but Jane remembered Anne-Marie’s fear that she would lose her place.

Not for a beau, then, but for her politics.

EIGHTEEN

The Honeybee Considered

Around Jane, her companions and the other townspeople continued their festivities unaware of the epiphany which Jane had suffered – and, in truth, ‘suffered’ was the only word for what she now felt. She had trusted Anne-Marie; and yet, considering her actions, Jane could not but wonder at her own blindness. When taken with other details, Anne-Marie’s interest in where the Vincents had been prior to Binché lost its friendly nature. Jane had been so relieved to have a confidant who spoke English that she had allowed her far more familiarity than any other servant. Added to Anne-Marie’s curiosity, there was the bee pendant, which she had been so anxious to keep a secret. Her attraction to Lieutenant Segal came as no surprise when viewed in the light of her loyalty to Napoleon’s France.

As their time together played through Jane’s mind, a single image checked her recollections: Anne-Marie holding the key to Vincent’s writing desk. A key which Jane had named, and then left in the apartment with Anne-Marie. She had not thought, or rather, Vincent had said that he was concerned about the servants, but Jane had discounted Anne-Marie from that equation, thinking he meant only the foreign servants. Anne-Marie was, after all, the daughter of an English woman.

But despite her mother’s origins and her command of the language, she was French and described herself as a Parisian. For all that, Anne-Marie was less a foreigner than either Jane or Vincent. Jane bewailed her own blind naïveté and felt it urgent that she speak with Vincent at once.

But that she could not do, engaged as he was in working glamours on the stage. Jane chafed at the restraint she must display as the spectacle continued over their heads, but was grateful for the distraction, as it kept the others from paying her much heed.

Mme Chastain did glance at her once and inquire if she would not rather return to the house.

‘No, thank you,’ Jane replied. ‘I had rather wait for Vincent.’

‘Oh!’ Mme Chastain waved her hand in dismissal. ‘They will not be home until quite late. My husband always takes the students out after a successful endeavour. He says a pint of ale rebuilds their strength after all this exertion.’