Read Chapter 21: The Trap Springs

The summons came not as a command but as a courtesy, which made it infinitely worse.

A footman in the Baron’s livery stood in the foyer of Camille’s apartment, hat in hand, his expression carved from stone. “The Baron requests your presence in his study this afternoon, Mademoiselle Moreau. At your earliest convenience.”

He left before she could ask questions. The words hung in the air like smoke.

Camille stood frozen in her stockings, the ledger burning a phantom weight beneath her floorboards where she’d hidden it after the gala. Her hands went cold. She forced herself to breathe, to think. He couldn’t know. The photographs were safe with Julien. She had been careful.

But Odette’s warning echoed in her skull like a bell tolling for the dead.

She dressed with deliberate calm. Pale blue, unassuming. Pearls that were not real but passed for them. The armor of a woman with nothing to hide.

The Baron’s townhouse swallowed her whole the moment she crossed its threshold. The footman led her past the grand salon, past the dining room where she had toasted his theatrical triumph, past the hallway where his portrait watched her with painted, knowing eyes.

His study door stood open. He was waiting for her at his desk, not seated behind it like a king receiving a subject, but standing before it, arms crossed, his face arranged in an expression of almost paternal regret. The kind a man wore before delivering a blow.

“Camille,” he said, and the single word was enough to make her knees lock. He never used her first name before company, and this was not company. This was judgment. “Please. Sit.”

“I prefer to stand, Baron.”

His mouth tightened. He walked to his desk and picked up an object that lay upon it—small, silver, glinting in the afternoon light. Her blood turned to winter.

The ledgers. No. Not the ledger itself, but a photograph of it. Page one, open, the gilded binding unmistakable. And beside it, a second photograph. Her, in the library at the château, her hand upon the shelf where the ledger had rested.

She had not seen the camera. She had not heard a shutter.

“Do you know what this is?” he asked, holding the photograph toward her as one might display a corpse at an inquest.

“It appears to be a photograph of a bookshelf.”

“Appears to be,” he repeated, setting it down with a soft click. “I have always admired your grace under pressure, Camille. Even now, you lie beautifully. It is why I chose you above all others for my theatre.”

Her throat constricted. “I have never lied to you, Baron.”

He laughed. It was a terrible sound, devoid of warmth.

“No? Then perhaps you can explain how my private ledger came to be removed from the estate, photographed, and returned. Perhaps you can explain why a clerk in the Ministry of Finance received an anonymous letter last week, referencing accounts he has no business knowing. Perhaps you can tell me why Julien Marchand—that gutter-rat journalist—has been seen at your apartment no fewer than five times in the past fortnight.”

Each word landed like a hammer on glass, cracking what remained of her composure.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, and her voice only trembled slightly. “Julien and I are acquainted, yes. He interviewed me for a piece on the theatre. I have done nothing wrong.”

“You have done everything wrong.” He stepped closer, and for the first time she saw the fury beneath his regret. It was not the cold anger of a betrayed patron. It was the desperate rage of a cornered animal. “You took something that belongs to me. You think I don’t know what you’ve been doing? You think I am so blinded by your pretty face that I cannot see the knife you carry behind your back?”

“Baron, I swear on my life—”

“Your brother,” he said.

The words stopped her heart.

“Gabriel. A promising young clerk at the Banque de Paris. It would be a tragedy if his employers were to learn of his sister’s… indiscretions. A scandal, for him. Ruin, perhaps.” He tilted his head, watching her face for the wound to open. “And what of your theatre, Camille? What of the career I built for you? I can destroy it in an afternoon. I can ensure no door in Paris opens for you, no stage welcomes you, no audience remembers your name.”

She stood very still. Her hands were shaking, so she pressed them flat against her skirts.

“I have done nothing,” she said, and even she could hear the lie curdling in her own mouth.

“Then you have nothing to fear.” He smiled, and it was the smile of a man who knew exactly what his visitor had done. “I have been generous with you, Camille. I have given you everything. I can take it all back. But I am not a cruel man. I am not an unreasonable man.”

He reached into his coat and produced an envelope, thick and cream-colored, sealed with green wax. He laid it on the desk beside the photographs.

“This is a contract. Fully funded. The Théâtre de l’Odéon’s new season. Lead roles. A salary that would make your actress friends weep with envy. All yours, the moment you walk out of this room. In exchange, you will forget whatever you think you know. You will destroy whatever evidence you have taken.” His eyes bored into hers. “And you will never speak to Julien Marchand again.”

The offer hung in the air between them. An escape. A golden cage.

Or a trap.

She looked at the photographs of her thievery, and behind them, in the shadows of the room where he could not see, she saw the shape of a much larger conspiracy. Devereux. The Comte de Vasseur. The dead in Alsace. Odette’s daughter. A web of rot that reached far beyond this room.

If she took his contract, she would be safe. Gabriel would be safe.

And the dead would remain silent forever.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said again, because it was all she had left.

His smile died.

“Then you are a fool as well as a liar,” he said quietly. “One week, Camille. I will give you one week to consider my generosity before I withdraw it. And I will tell you now, with all the honesty you have denied me: you do not want to make an enemy of me. You do not want to see what I am capable of when I am crossed.”

She fled.

She did not run—running would be admission—but she walked out of that study with her spine straight and her stomach in freefall. The footman did not meet her eyes as he opened the door. The sunlight outside was too bright, too ordinary.

She reached the street and only then did she begin to shake.

He had known. All along, he had known. And he had given her a choice that was not a choice at all, because the photographs were already in his hands, and Gabriel’s future was already in his pockets, and the only thing she had left was the truth.

She started walking toward the river. Toward Julien.