‘Thank you.’ Jane unlocked the door to the apartment and left it standing open. She gestured at the dresses strewn across the room. ‘You may put these away when you come in the morning.’

Bewildered, Anne-Marie lifted her head, tears streaking her face.

‘I shall need help, and you can take nothing else from me that you have not already.’ Setting her back to the girl, Jane took up her candle and went into the bedchamber.

She shut the door, locked it, and set the travelling case on the bedside table. With dry, dispassionate movements, she opened the case and pulled out the glass Sphère from where it lay swaddled in cloth. The clear glass cooled her fingers. Jane lay on the bed and curled around the ball.

In the other room, cabinets opened and shut. Clothes snapped and rustled as they were folded. Jane lay awake until the outer apartment door clicked shut and then she lay still awake, wishing herself asleep.

Once, when she had longed for sleep, she had worked glamour to drive herself to exhaustion. This night, she lay dry-eyed and staring until the candle burned down. Then she watched the dark.

TWENTY-TWO

Cravats and Easels

Jane had spent the night thinking about what she might do with the knowledge of where Vincent was. She had decided that the thing she must do before anything else was to see the location where the French held him. That would inform all her other decisions.

To that end, she left her room as the sun first lit the sky with pale, watery light. As if responding to her mood, clouds stretched from horizon to horizon with the promise of a grim and brooding day. She went to the wing of the house where the Chastains lived and let herself into Yves’s room.

There she searched through the clothing that he had left behind and selected the plainest trousers, shirt and coat she could find. A battered pair of boots stood well back in the wardrobe, and Jane took those as well. With stockings, a cravat, and a waistcoat to complete her ensemble, Jane returned to her apartments.

Despite having worn men’s garments at the glass factory, these felt strange and too confining. Where before the clothing had been too large and threatened to fall off of her, here she was aware of how the buckskin trousers clung to her legs and defined her thighs. The slight swell of her middle was not pronounced enough to show for what it was, but simply lent her a stouter figure. Tying the cravat seemed natural, given the number of times Jane had helped Vincent with his.

She had to pause, eyes closed, against the memory of the line of his jaw.

When she opened her eyes, Anne-Marie stood in the door.

‘Good morning.’ Tucking the end of the cravat through its final knot, Jane finished tying it.