Read Chapter 27: The Aftermath of Accusation

The morning light fell grey through the tall windows of the Sisters of Saint Claire’s guest parlor, catching the dust that hung in the air. Marguerite had not slept. She sat with her hands folded in her lap, the copied ledger pages pressed against her ribs beneath her bodice, and watched the door.

When it opened, the Duchesse de Montfort entered with her chin high and her gown travel-stained. The nuns had given her a clean cap and a cup of broth, but nothing could smooth the lines of exhaustion around her eyes. She crossed the room and lowered herself onto the bench beside Marguerite without a word.

“They let you go,” Marguerite said quietly.

“They did not *let* me do anything.” The Duchesse’s voice was dry. “I told them I had business in Amiens and that the accusation was a slander from a dying woman. I reminded them that my brother is a fool and my mother is estranged, and that none of the Montfort name has ever soiled itself with poison. Then I walked past them and ordered my carriage.” She paused. “They did not stop me. But they will be watching the house now.”

Dr. Beaumont appeared in the doorway, his coat damp from the morning fog. He carried a small leather case and the smell of the road. He nodded to Marguerite, then sat across from them and placed his hands on his knees.

“The Comtesse’s recantation reached the King’s ear before dawn,” he said. “She named the Duchesse’s mother as the patron who paid for the poison scheme. The King has ordered an inquiry into the Montfort estate.”

The Duchesse went very still. “She named *my mother*.”

“Antoinette de Valois-Descamps,” Beaumont said carefully. “Estranged fifteen years. Still receiving money through solicitors, as you know.”

The Duchesse laughed, but it was a hard, ugly sound. “Of course. Of course she would drag that name through the mud.” She turned to Marguerite, and her eyes were bright with fury. “My mother is a bitter, spiteful woman who blamed me for my father’s death. She threatened to prevent my marriage. She said—she said that if I wed Armand’s father, I would be a widow before I was twenty-five. I thought it was the wine talking. I thought she was merely cruel.”

“But you continued to send her money,” Marguerite said.

“Because she is my mother.” The Duchesse’s voice cracked. “Because I am not the one who became monstrous.”

Beaumont leaned forward. “Your Grace, I understand your distress. But we must be clear-eyed. The Comtesse’s testimony is not proof. She is a condemned woman. She may be lying to save her soul, or to damn you in spite, or because she was paid to speak those words by a person still at large. Her confession is a weapon, not a fact.”

“Then who is wielding it?” the Duchesse demanded.

Marguerite felt the weight of the pages against her ribs. “We have only the copies,” she said. “They show that Armand purchased vials delivered to his own door. They show he used your marriage contract to settle a debt with the ring. But there may be more. The original ledgers—the full client list—remained under the floorboard at Rue de la Licorne.”

“If the King’s men found them,” Beaumont said, “then the inquiry will have everything it needs to condemn the entire Montfort line.”

The Duchesse pressed her fingers to her temples. “Then we go back. We retrieve the ledgers before anyone else does.”

“We cannot,” Marguerite said. “Your face is on every broadsheet in Paris. My name too, though they describe me poorly.” She tried to smile, but it came out grim. “The Comtesse saw to that.”

The room fell quiet. Somewhere beyond the walls, a bell rang for the morning office. The sisters’ voices rose in plainchant, thin and clear through the stone.

Marguerite took a breath. She had not spoken of the accusation since it had landed. She had not even let herself think on it clearly, because thinking on it meant reckoning with the shape of it. But now, in the grey light and the plain room with the Duchesse before her, she allowed herself to speak.

“The Comtesse’s story was that someone paid her to poison you so that they might inherit your estate. That is not a small scheme. That is a plan built to unfold over months. Someone had to know your habits, your medicines, your comings and goings. Someone had to know that Armand was weak enough to be turned.” She looked at Beaumont. “You said it yourself last night. The accusation may be a calculated move by the ring’s true leader, meant to break the Duchesse and force her into dependence.”

Beaumont nodded slowly. “Who profits if your Grace is cleared?”

The Duchesse frowned. “Why would anyone profit from my being cleared?”

“Think,” Marguerite pressed. “Not at the moment of the clearing—in the weeks after. Who steps forward to help you, to guide you, to speak for you? Who gains your trust?”

A long pause. The Duchesse’s face worked through a series of expressions. “The King’s inquiry would require me to cooperate with the crown. That would mean placing myself under their protection. Their *administration* of my estate, perhaps.” She said it slowly, as if tasting something bitter. “And my solicitor already writes to me twice a week. He has always been attentive.”

“And your mother’s solicitors,” Marguerite said. “They receive your payments on her behalf. They know your fortune’s every turn.”

The Duchesse’s eyes sharpened. “Jean-Baptiste Levasseur. He has handled my mother’s affairs for twenty years. I have never met him, but I receive his letters.” She paused. “He was the one who first told me my mother had taken to her bed with a wasting illness and needed more funds. He has been a constant voice, telling me I must do more, send more, trust more.”

Beaumont’s mouth tightened. “You have a man who knows your finances, who has the ear of your estranged mother, and who has, for years, advised you on the disposition of your wealth. And if the Comtesse’s testimony convinces the inquiry that your mother was the patron, what happens to your estate while the investigation proceeds?”

“It would be frozen,” the Duchesse whispered. “Seized to cover damages. Placed in trust until the matter is resolved.”

“In trust under whom?”

She stared at him. “Under the crown. Under its appointed administrators.”

“And if the crown is slow to untangle a twenty-year web of evidence,” Beaumont said, “the administrators would be the only ones with their hands on the Montfort purse. Would that man be Levasseur?”

The Duchesse’s hand went to her throat. “My mother’s solicitor is also my own. I gave him a mandate when my father died. I—I never thought to revise it. He has always been so kind.”

Marguerite reached across and took her hand. The Duchesse’s skin was cold. “We are not beaten yet,” Marguerite said. “We have pieces. The Comtesse spoke of a patron. She may have believed it was your mother. Or she may have spoken the words someone fed her. But the true ledger—the full client list—that will tell us who else was buying and selling. If Levasseur’s name is there, we have him. If it is not, we know the ledger is incomplete and that someone else is holding back the truth.”

“We do not have the ledger,” Beaumont reminded them. “We have copies of only part.”

“Then we find the rest.” Marguerite looked between them. “The Comtesse’s testimony pointed at the Duchesse’s mother. But who could have told her that name? Someone who knows the Montfort family’s wounds intimately. Someone who knows that naming Antoinette would wound the Duchesse deeply and send the inquiry chasing a ghost while the real criminals walk free.”

“You are suggesting the Comtesse was manipulated to the very end,” the Duchesse said.

“I am suggesting that the truth still lives somewhere. It lives in the ledgers beneath the floor of a safe house on Rue de la Licorne. It lives in the record of who paid the apothecaries and who purchased the vials and who carried them to the doors of the dying.” Marguerite withdrew her hand and pressed it to the papers beneath her bodice. “I kept these pages because they proved Armand’s guilt. But they prove something else now. They prove that the ring kept organized records of every client, every order, every payment. That kind of bookkeeping rarely lies.”

Beaumont looked at her with something like respect. “Then we must return to the safe house before the King’s men sweep it. But we cannot do it openly. The broadsheets have made you famous, Marguerite.”

“I know.” She rose from the bench and walked to the window. The courtyard below was empty; the sisters had gone to chapel. Beyond the walls, the road to Paris wound through frost-bitten fields. “I know I cannot walk into Paris as myself. But I am a lady’s maid, Dr. Beaumont. I have spent my life being invisible in rooms where I was not supposed to be seen. I can do it again.”

“You would go alone?” the Duchesse asked.

“I would not.” Marguerite turned back. “I would go with Dr. Beaumont. He is known to the apothecaries, and he can speak to the sort of men who keep shops and watch the streets. I will be his niece from the provinces, come to visit. No one will notice another young woman in Paris.”

The Duchesse rose slowly. “And I?”

“You will wait here,” Marguerite said gently. “You will let the inquiry think you have fled in guilt, or that you are hiding. You will let Levasseur believe he has won. And when we return with the ledger—with the truth—you will walk into the King’s presence with the evidence in your hand and watch his face when he learns who truly pulled the threads.”

The Duchesse stared at her for a long moment. “You are asking me to sit in a convent while you risk your life for me again.”

“I am asking you to trust me,” Marguerite said. “As you have trusted me before.”

A long silence stretched between them. Then the Duchesse’s shoulders lowered by a fraction. “There is one more thing,” she said quietly. “If Levasseur has been writing to my mother on my behalf for all these years, then he may have told her things I never wished her to know. He may have kept us apart intentionally.” Her voice trembled. “I have been sending money to a woman who was supposed to have renounced me. And I never once thought to ask if the letters I sent even reached her.”

Beaumont’s eyes met Marguerite’s. The implication hung in the air between them.

If Levasseur controlled the Duchesse’s correspondence with her mother, then he controlled the story of their estrangement. He could have poisoned that relationship with the same care he might have used to poison the Duchesse herself.

“We will find out,” Marguerite said. “But first, we must reach the ledger before the King’s men do.”

She pulled her shawl tighter around her shoulders and moved toward the door. Behind her, the Duchesse sank back onto the bench, her face pale and unreadable. Somewhere in the distant city, the Comtesse de Vance sat condemned in the Bastille, waiting for the cup that would end her. But her words—those would outlive her. They would echo in courts and salons and the King’s ear until someone proved them false.

Marguerite paused at the door and looked back. The Duchesse’s eyes were wet, but she held Marguerite’s gaze without flinching.

“I will not fail you,” Marguerite said.

“You never have,” the Duchesse answered. “And you have never once complained that I have failed you.”

Marguerite did not have an answer for that. She left the parlor and crossed the courtyard to where Beaumont waited with the carriage, the copied pages a quiet weight against her heart and the unopened letter from her mother still tucked in her pocket—unread, and now perhaps better left that way until the truth was found.