Read Chapter 12: The Ledger Stolen Again

Marguerite found Dr. Beaumont’s door ajar before she reached the landing, the wood splintered where the lock had given way. Her stomach clenched. She pushed inside and stood in a ruin.

Books lay spine-broken across the floor. Drawers had been yanked from his desk and dashed against the wall, their contents scattered like fallen leaves. The mattress sagged sideways off its frame, slashed open, straw spilling from the guts of it. Even the hearth had been emptied, ash tracked across the boards in grey footprints.

Beaumont knelt at the center of the chaos, his back to her, methodically turning over papers. When he heard her step, he did not start. He simply said, “They took the copy.”

“The ledger?”

“The only thing worth taking.” He stood, dusting his hands. His face was pale but composed. “They left the silver. Left the books—or most of them. Whoever did this knew precisely what they were hunting.”

Marguerite’s breath came short. “The Comtesse. You said she’d taken measures. This is what she takes.”

“Or someone beneath her.” Beaumont crossed to the window, pulled the shutter aside, and peered down into the street. “The question is how they knew I had it. I told no one but you.”

“Neither did I.” She stepped over a fallen candlestick. “Unless Masson talked. The Provost’s men took him—he may have bargained for his skin with whatever he could spill.”

“Then the street knows everything Masson knew. And Masson knew I paid for that copy.” Beaumont turned from the window. His voice tightened. “Which means they’ll know I have testimony as well. The signed account of your mother’s death.”

The words struck her differently now. Her mother. For years she had carried grief like a sealed vessel, never allowing it to crack. Now the truth had been poured into it, and the weight of it pressed against her ribs.

“Where is the testimony now?” she asked.

Beaumont hesitated. It was a small hesitation, barely a heartbeat, but she caught it.

“I moved it,” he said. “Three nights ago, after you told me about the gardener. I did not trust my own rooms.”

Relief moved through her, tentative. “Then today was a waste on their part. They stole a copy of a ledger they could have taken from Masson’s shop, and they found nothing of true value.”

“Not nothing.” He gestured to the scattered papers. “They saw my correspondence. My patients’ names. The circle I keep.” He paused. “They will know I am close to something. And that I have a partner.”

The air in the room seemed to drop a degree. Marguerite’s hand strayed to her collar, where beneath the fabric, her mother’s locket hung warm against her skin. It had grown heavier of late, as if the poison within had begun to acquire mass.

“Then it is not a question of whether we are watched,” she said, “but of how closely.”

“Precisely.” Beaumont righted a chair and sat, motioning for her to take the other. She did not. She stood with her back to the wall, where she could see the doorway.

“I will not ask again whether you are certain about the Duchesse,” he said. “You have seen the woman herself pour poison into her tea. But I will ask whether you have reconsidered how to approach her. She has already dismissed you once.”

Marguerite thought of the Duchesse’s face as she waved off her warnings—elegant, distracted, utterly convinced her lady’s maid had merely read too many sensational pamphlets. The Duchesse lived in a world where treachery happened to other houses, lesser houses. The Montfort name had sheltered her so completely that she had forgotten the walls could crack.

“She will not listen again without proof she cannot dismiss,” Marguerite said. “The testimony you hold. If I show it to her, she will have to see it. A physician’s signed account of a murder, naming the Comtesse de Vaudreuil—that is not gossip. That is evidence.”

“It is evidence of one murder,” Beaumont said. “The Duchesse is practical. She may accept that the Comtesse killed your mother. She will not immediately believe that the Comtesse is now, this very hour, attempting to kill her. The leap is too wide for a woman of her temperament.”

“Then I make the leap for her.” Marguerite’s voice flattened. “I cannot let her drink another cup of that woman’s tisane. She has already taken half a cup. The poisoner said a fortnight. We do not have a fortnight.”

Beaumont rubbed his jaw. “And the new lady-in-waiting? Mlle de la Mothe. If you confront the Duchesse with proof and she hesitates—even for an hour—that woman will be warned. She will vanish. And the Comtesse will simply hire another.”

“I know.” Marguerite closed her eyes, and behind them she saw the scene from the hidden room again: Mlle de la Mothe’s slender fingers accepting the page’s parcel, her calm voice discussing dosage as if it were a question of sugar cubes. She had called Marguerite a threat. She had said she had killed “the other.”

Her mother. This woman had poured the draught that ended her mother’s life. And now she walked the same corridors as Marguerite, breathing the same air, wearing the same livery.

The locket shifted against her chest. Marguerite had worn it since the night her mother died—a small oval of gold, the hinge stiff with age. Inside, a lock of dark hair pressed flat. She had never opened it until three days ago, when she had finally pried the back panel loose and found the vial.

She had not known what to do with it then. She had thought of it as a relic, a memento of her mother’s fear. The poison her mother had procured for her own protection, never used.

Now Marguerite understood. It was not a relic. It was a promise.

“There is another way,” she said slowly. “If I cannot convince the Duchesse with evidence, I can convince her with fear. Mlle de la Mothe is close to her. The woman will have access to her food again tonight, tomorrow morning. If the Duchesse becomes suddenly, visibly ill—ill enough to summon every physician in the palace—she will have to ask why. And when she does, I will not be the one to give her the answer. Let the poison itself speak.”

Beaumont’s eyes narrowed. “You mean to let her suffer the effects.”

“She has already consumed the poison. It is slow. Perhaps, if it is not stopped, it will begin to work soon regardless.” Marguerite’s throat tightened. “But I cannot simply wait. And I cannot let her send me away again. I am the only one in that house who sees what is happening.”

“You are not the only one.” He said it quietly, not looking at her. “You have me. Whatever the Comtesse has done to my rooms, whatever she stole, she cannot steal what I carry in my memory. I know her methods now. I know how she operates. And I have told you I knew your mother. I did not tell you everything.”

Marguerite stepped closer. “What do you mean?”

Beaumont was silent for a long moment. When he spoke, his voice was lower, rougher. “Your mother came to me two weeks before she died. She was afraid of something—she would not say what. But she asked me to hold a document for her. A letter, she said. To be given to you if anything happened to her.”

Marguerite’s breath stopped. “A letter?”

“I have kept it safe all these years.” Beaumont rose, crossed to the ruined desk, and knelt before a loose floorboard near the leg. He pried it up with his fingers and drew out a folded paper, yellowed at the edges, sealed with a drop of wax the color of dried blood. “I never read it. She asked that only you open it.”

He held it out. Marguerite took it with trembling hands. The paper was soft, worn from years of hidden storage. On the outer fold, in her mother’s careful hand, was written just one word:

*Marguerite*

She did not open it there. She pressed it to her chest, over the locket, and felt the weight of two generations of secrets pressing against her heart.

“Thank you,” she managed.

Beaumont nodded. “Whatever she wrote, it may change what you think you know. Read it when you are alone.” He paused. “And if it names the Comtesse, as I suspect it will, you will have more than my testimony. You will have your mother’s own account.”

Marguerite tucked the letter into her bodice, beside the locket. The poison and the truth sat side by side, one ready to kill, the other ready to expose.

She looked at the ransacked room, at the evidence of how close they had come to losing everything.

“They know about you,” she said. “They know about me. But they do not know about this.”

She touched her bodice.

“And they will not, until it is too late.”