Read Chapter 24: The Unmasking

The streets of Versailles were quiet, but Marguerite’s heart was not. She pressed the folded pages against her ribs as she hurried through the service corridor toward the Duchesse’s apartments, the copied ledger list burning in her palms. She had left Dr. Beaumont at the postern gate to wait with the horses, his face pale and set, his warnings still echoing in her ears.

The Duchesse de Montfort stood at the window, her silhouette thin against the grey afternoon light. She turned when Marguerite entered, and for a moment, Marguerite saw the ghost of the woman she had served for months—the woman who had laughed at court gossip, who had chosen silks with delight, who had trusted her brother without question. That woman was gone.

“You disobeyed me,” the Duchesse said quietly.

“Yes, Madame.” Marguerite closed the door behind her. “And I found what I needed.”

She crossed the room and laid the copied pages on the small writing table before her mistress. The ink was still sharp, the names legible. Armand’s name was there, fourth from the top, circled twice in Marguerite’s own hand.

The Duchesse read in silence. Her fingers did not tremble. Her gaze did not waver. When she finished, she looked up, and there was something cold and final in her eyes that Marguerite had never seen before.

“Send for him,” the Duchesse said. “Tell him I wish to speak of our mother’s estate. He will come.”

Marguerite hesitated. “Madame, he may suspect—”

“He suspects nothing. He believes I am dying.” The Duchesse’s voice was flat. “That is what he has been told. That is what he wishes to believe. Send for him.”

The message was dispatched. Marguerite waited in the antechamber, her hands clasped behind her back, listening to the clock tick away the quarter hours. When Armand de Montfort entered, he was smiling—a handsome, careless smile that had charmed half the court and hidden the rot beneath.

“Sister,” he said, bowing over her hand. “You look pale. The physicians again?”

“They have been tireless,” the Duchesse said. “But I have found a new remedy. Marguerite, show my brother what you found.”

Armand’s smile faltered as Marguerite placed the ledger pages before him. He looked at them. Then at his sister. Then back at the pages, where his name sat in stark black ink beside the record of vials purchased—three, paid for in gold, delivered to his own door on the Rue Saint-Honoré.

His composure cracked like thin ice. He dropped the pages as if they burned him and fell to his knees before his sister, his fine coat dragging on the parquet.

“Duchesse—Elodie—I can explain.”

“Explain,” she repeated. Her voice was very quiet. “You bought poison. You brought it into my home. You watched me suffer for months. You watched me vomit blood into silver basins and thought I would never learn who had paid for my suffering.”

“I did not know what she would do with it!” His voice broke. “The Comtesse told me it was for a rival, some woman in Paris who had crossed her, a spiteful thing—she promised me she would never use it at court. I needed money, Elodie. The debts, the gambling houses, I owed amounts I cannot name—I was drowning. She offered me a way out. I never thought she would turn it on you. I swear it on our mother’s soul.”

“Your mother’s soul,” the Duchesse repeated. “Our mother, who died in my arms when you were five years old. You barely remember her face, Armand. Do not presume to swear on her soul to me.”

He crawled forward, grasping at her skirts. “I love you. You are my blood. I was a fool, a coward, a pawn—I did not understand what she was until it was too late. When I learned she had been administering the doses herself, I wanted to come to you, to warn you, but I was afraid. I was so afraid.”

“Afraid of what?” The Duchesse’s hand was steady as she reached down and lifted his chin. “Of the truth? Of the consequences you knew you deserved?”

“Of losing you.” Tears streaked his face. “I have nothing else. Everything I have, everything I am, comes from your shadow. I thought if I could pay my debts and keep my name clean, I could remain your brother in good standing. I never would have harmed you deliberately. Never.”

The room was still. Marguerite could hear her own heartbeat. The Duchesse looked at her brother for a long, terrible moment. Then she stepped back, and her hand fell away from his face.

“You chose gambling over me,” she said. “You chose a stranger’s coin over your own blood. And you chose to believe a woman who flattered you rather than the sister who raised you when our parents died. Is that love, Armand?”

He opened his mouth, but no words came.

The Duchesse turned to the window. Her silhouette seemed sharper now, less frail. “You will leave Versailles tonight,” she said. “You will take the carriage to the country estate. You will not return to court. You will not write to me. You will not draw on my accounts. You will live quietly on whatever allowance I choose to send you, and you will thank God for every day that I do not hand these pages to the King’s police myself.”

“Elodie, please—”

“You are no longer my brother.” Her voice cracked on the word, and for the first time Marguerite heard grief beneath the steel. “You are a stranger who wore my family’s name and sold my life for cards. Go. Take your cowardice with you. I never want to see your face again.”

He rose slowly, unsteadily, like a man waking from a dream. He looked at Marguerite as he passed, and there was something broken in his eyes—not remorse, but bewilderment, as if he had never truly understood the shape of his own actions.

“I did love her,” he whispered to Marguerite. “She was all I had.”

Marguerite said nothing. She watched him walk out, and the door closed behind him with a soft click.

The Duchesse stood at the window for another long moment. When she spoke, her voice was low.

“He will tell the Comtesse’s allies everything he knows to save himself.”

“He knows nothing of the ring’s true source,” Marguerite said. “The Baron was clear. Armand only dealt with the Comtesse.”

“You trust the Baron?”

“I trust the pages we copied.” Marguerite moved to stand beside her mistress. “The Baron said the Comtesse corresponded with the ring through a dead drop at Saint-Sulpice. If the Comtesse is arrested and cannot collect her mail, someone else will. We need to watch that church.”

The Duchesse turned. Her eyes were dry, but there was a rawness to her face that spoke of tears not yet shed. “Marguerite. You saved my life.”

“I did not do it alone, Madame.”

“No.” The Duchesse looked down at the ledger pages. “Dr. Beaumont. My brother. And Claire—the woman who died for this. I owe all of you.” She lifted her gaze to meet Marguerite’s. “Whatever you need from me now, you will have it. My name. My purse. My protection. What do you intend to do next?”

Marguerite drew a breath. “The Baron gave me a key to the safe house where the original ledgers are kept,” she said. “I lost it when we escaped. But there is another way in—a back window that faces the river. If we are swift, we can return before Armand’s men learn he has been cast out. We can take the ledger, and we can find the man who commands the ring.”

“We?” The Duchesse raised an eyebrow. “You are not going back alone.”

“Madame, the King will question you tomorrow. You are needed here.”

“The King can wait.” The Duchesse crossed to her writing desk and pulled out a small pistol, checking its powder with steady hands. “Armand’s threats end here. My life is mine again. And the man who sold my brother his poison has never met Elodie de Montfort. It is time he does.”

Marguerite stared at her. “You cannot come to Paris. If you are recognized, if anyone sees the Duchesse de Montfort breaking into a safe house in the middle of the night—”

“Then I shall wear a plain hood and walk in the shadows with you.” The Duchesse smiled, and there was iron in it. “I have spent sixteen years being a jewel in a gilded cage, Marguerite. Tonight, I intend to be a weapon instead.”

From the corridor outside came a soft knock. Marguerite opened the door to find a palace footman, breathless and pale.

“Mademoiselle,” he said, lowering his voice. “There is word from the King’s council chamber. The Comtesse de Vaudreuil has been removed from her cell. The King has taken her confession personally.”

Marguerite felt the floor shift beneath her. “What did she say?”

“She named the Duchesse de Montfort as the head of the poison operation,” the footman whispered. “She told the King the Duchesse ordered her own poisoning to escape suspicion. And she said the Duchesse’s lady’s maid—you, Mademoiselle—are the one who carried the vials from Paris.”

The Duchesse’s pistol clattered against the desk.

From the window, Marguerite heard the distant clatter of hooves on the palace courtyard—guards being mustered, orders being shouted. The King’s men were coming.

She reached down, took the Duchesse’s hand, and pressed the pistol back into her palm. Her mother’s unopened letter crinkled against her stays.

“Then we go now,” Marguerite said. “Or we do not go at all.”