Read Chapter 15: The Hidden Compartment

The Comtesse de Vaudreuil’s chambers smelled of dried lavender and something older—dust trapped behind silk. Marguerite kept her eyes low as the Comtesse’s personal maid, a pinched woman named Hélène, eyed the porcelain pot in her hands.

“Madame la Comtesse requested her tisane be brought fresh at three,” Marguerite said, bobbing a practiced curtsy. “The kitchens are short-handed with the fête preparations. I was told to leave it in her private sitting room.”

Hélène sniffed. “She didn’t mention it to me.”

“Her note arrived only an hour ago.” Marguerite held out a scrap of paper she’d inked herself that morning, copying the Comtesse’s looped hand from a discarded invitation she’d lifted from a waste basket. “I was to disturb no one.”

Hélène took the note, scanned it, and pursed her lips. The forgery was good—not perfect, but good enough for a woman who had better things to do than question a lady’s maid with a plausible errand. She stepped aside.

“Set it on the sideboard. And do not touch anything.”

“Of course, Mademoiselle Hélène.”

The door clicked shut behind her. Marguerite’s heart hammered against her ribs as she crossed the sunlit room, past the gilded chairs and the harp with its strings gently furred by neglect. The Comtesse’s private sitting room was a museum of wealth—porcelain shepherdesses, a desk inlaid with mother-of-pearl—but Marguerite’s gaze went straight to the commode against the far wall.

She’d seen it once before, two years ago, when delivering a message on behalf of the Duchesse. An unassuming piece, dark walnut, its carvings of fruit and flowers nearly worn smooth. The kind of furniture a woman kept for sentimental value rather than display.

She set the tisane down and listened. No footsteps. The outer door was thick. She had minutes, perhaps.

Her fingers found the edge of the commode’s top drawer. Nothing but gloves. The second drawer held ribbons and a broken fan. She slid her hand beneath the drawer’s base, searching for the tell-tale gap—and found it. A slim protrusion, barely thicker than a fingernail, hidden in the joinery where the wood had warped with age.

She pressed.

A panel beneath the drawer slid sideways with a whisper of silk-smooth wood. Inside, the space was shallow but deliberate. What she found made her breath catch.

A lock of hair, black as a raven’s wing, tied with a thin gold thread. And a folded note.

Marguerite’s hands trembled as she lifted the paper. It was crisp, expensive, watermarked with a fleur-de-lis. She unfolded it.

The script was elegant, careful—but not the Duchesse’s. Marguerite knew her mistress’s hand well: the sharp upstrokes, the slight leftward lean from a childhood of writing at a tilted desk. This was different. Softer. Rounder.

*My dear C—*

*The mixture is ready. Administer it as we agreed, and the matter will be settled by the next full moon. The Montfort succession shall pass as intended. Do not fail me. Do not write again. Burn this, as you burned the last. Delete all traces of affection between us, for what must be done is done with a cold heart, even if mine bleeds.*

*—D*

Marguerite read it twice. Three times. The signature was unmistakable: a single, ornate D. The Duchesse’s initials were D.M. — Dominique de Montfort.

But the writing was not hers.

She pressed the note against her chest, her mind racing. The lock of hair—black, fine. Marguerite’s own mother had hair of that same midnight shade. The thought turned her stomach to ice.

She heard footsteps in the corridor.

Marguerite shoved the note into her bodice, slid the panel home, and smoothed her skirts over the drawer. She was reaching for the tisane pot when the door swung open.

Hélène entered, eyes narrowing. “You’re still here.”

“I was adjusting the pot’s position. The sun catches the porcelain.” Marguerite curtsied, smile fixed. “Shall I pour?”

“Get out.”

Marguerite did not run. She walked, measured, unhurried, until she reached the servants’ stairwell. Then she fled down the narrow stone steps, her slippers slapping against the worn treads, her heart a wild drum in her ears.

She did not stop until she reached the chapel. Unused at this hour, it was cool and dark, candles guttering before the altar. She slipped into the last pew and pulled out the note again.

The letters swam before her eyes. She had hoped—foolishly, desperately—that she would find proof of the Comtesse’s guilt. Instead she had found a rope tied around the Duchesse’s neck.

*The Montfort succession shall pass as intended.*

What did that mean? The Duchesse’s son was dead—killed in the wars three years past. Her remaining heir was a nephew, a boy of seven who lived in the country with his mother, a woman Marguerite had never once heard the Duchesse mention with warmth. If the Duchesse died without issue, the title passed to her husband’s line.

But the Comtesse de Vaudreuil was born a Montfort.

Marguerite’s blood went cold. The Comtesse wasn’t merely the Duchesse’s rival—she was her cousin, twice removed, the last of a cadet branch. If the succession defaulted, the Comtesse’s own son would inherit. A boy she would do anything to see elevated.

She thought of the Duchesse’s flat reaction to Mlle de la Mothe’s drowning. The way her mistress had waved away every warning, every suspicion, with practiced indifference. Was the Duchesse herself part of this? Had she authorized her own slow murder to clear the way for a child she despised?

No. That made no sense.

But someone had written that note in the Comtesse’s chambers, signed with the Duchesse’s initial, describing a poison that would work by the next full moon. The mixture was ready. And Marguerite had watched the Duchesse drink her evening tea for the last four nights.

She shoved the note deeper into her bodice and pressed her fist to her mouth. She could not go to the Duchesse—not yet. Not with evidence that pointed at her mistress, not when Marguerite still carried her dead mother’s letter unopened in her pocket.

She needed Dr. Beaumont. He was the only one who could trace the handwriting, confirm whether the note was genuine or a forgery meant to misdirect. And if the Comtesse’s agents had already targeted his rooms, they might have silenced him by now.

Marguerite rose. Her legs felt hollow, but she forced them to move.

She was halfway down the aisle when she heard footsteps behind her. Heavy. Male.

She turned. A man stood in the shadows by the chapel door—tall, broad-shouldered, his face hidden. The candlelight caught the glint of a silver hilt at his belt.

“Mademoiselle Moreau,” he said, and her name on a stranger’s lips felt like ice down her spine. “I believe you have something that belongs to my mistress.”

Marguerite’s hand closed around the vial in her pocket: the belladonna her mother had left her. She had not yet opened her mother’s letter. She had not yet understood what she was carrying.

But she understood one thing now. She was not the only one who knew the Comtesse’s hiding place—and the Comtesse knew Marguerite had found it.