Read Chapter 35: The Missing Apothecary

The corridor was empty, but the smell of him lingered—sulphur, camphor, something sweetly rotten beneath. Marguerite pressed herself flat against the cold stone wall, her heart slamming against her ribs. She had not imagined it. She had seen his face in the torchlight, gaunt and pockmarked, the same face that had stared at her from behind the counter of a shuttered apothecary’s shop three months ago, when she had bought the poison that nearly killed her mistress.

He was here. Inside the palace. On the night of the King’s celebration of the Duchesse’s exoneration.

Music drifted from the grand salon three corridors away—lutes and violins, the high laughter of courtiers who had already drunk too much champagne. They were celebrating her victory while the man who had sold the means of her mistress’s death prowled these very halls, and no one but Marguerite knew.

She should call the guards. She should scream. But her voice had dried to dust in her throat, and he had seen her—she was certain of it. His eyes had locked onto hers for a single heartbeat before he turned and vanished around the bend, and that was enough. He had known her name. He had come for her.

The warning note burned in her pocket. *He is free. He knows who you are. He will find you before the week is out.* She had thought it a threat from an enemy. Now she understood it was a plea from a friend she had not yet met.

Marguerite forced her feet forward, one step, then another. The corridor branched ahead—left toward the kitchens, right toward the private apartments. A servant’s passage, barely wide enough for two, cut between them. She should take it. She should run.

But if she ran, he would slip away again. And the King’s magistrates had already proven they could not hold him. She had seen the forged ledger, the copied letters, the careful web of lies that had nearly condemned an innocent woman. This man was the thread that held the web together. If she let him go, the web would re-form around her throat.

She took the servant’s passage.

It was darker here. The torchlight from the main corridor faded behind her, leaving only thin shafts of moonlight through high, narrow windows. Her slippers made no sound on the flagstones. She counted her breaths to keep from gasping.

The passage opened into a small antechamber—a waiting room for servants who attended the eastern galleries. A single candle burned on a side table, its flame guttering as if someone had passed too close. The air was thick with that scent again: sulphur, camphor, rot.

“You should not have followed me down here.”

His voice was rough, low, and very close behind her. Marguerite spun. He stood in the doorway, blocking her escape, his frame gaunt beneath a worn coat that had once been fine. His hands were empty, but his eyes were not. They held the flat certainty of a man who had decided what he must do.

“The poison,” she said, and was surprised at how steady her voice sounded. “You made it. You sold it to Jacques. You knew what it was for.”

“I knew what it was.” He took a step toward her. “What others did with it was not my concern. Until you came to my shop with the Duchesse’s coin and made it my concern.”

“I came to save her life.”

“You came to end it.” Another step. “You think I do not know your name, Marguerite? You think I do not know what you asked me to mix for her, that night, when you thought no one would see? Your hands trembled. Your voice shook. You said it was for a sick dog.”

Marguerite’s blood turned cold. She had said exactly that. She had paid him three weeks’ wages and told herself it was mercy.

“You never had a sick dog,” he said. “You had a mistress you wished to see suffer.”

“No.” The word came out cracked, desperate. “I had a mistress who was being poisoned by her own mother. I needed to find the poisoner. I needed proof.”

“And you thought you would find it in the bottom of a vial?”

“I found it in other ways.” She lifted her chin. “And you are caught. The guards know you have escaped. Every gate of Paris is watched.”

“Then I have nothing to lose.” He reached into his coat, and the blade came out gleaming—short, curved, the kind a man used for careful work. “And you are the one who came to me.”

He lunged.

Marguerite threw herself sideways, and the blade scraped against the stone wall where her throat had been. She stumbled, caught her heel on the hem of her gown, and went down hard. The candle toppled and died.

Darkness swallowed the room.

She heard his breath, ragged and close, and scrabbled backward across the flagstones, her fingers finding nothing but dust and cold. Then a new noise—heavy footsteps, a man’s grunt of exertion, and the sickening crack of bone against flesh.

“Marguerite!” Beaumont’s voice, sharp with panic and relief.

The moonlight caught the shape of two men wrestling. Then one of them crashed to the ground, and Beaumont rose above him, breathing hard, a pistol gripped in his fist by the barrel.

“I saw him slip past the salon,” Beaumont said, his voice rough. “I followed him. I did not know you would be here.” He crouched beside Marguerite, his hand finding hers in the darkness. “Are you hurt?”

“No.” Her voice trembled. “You came.”

“I will always come.” He squeezed her fingers. “But we must move. He is not dead—only stunned. And the King’s guard is two corridors over.”

Below them, the apothecary groaned.

Marguerite looked at Beaumont, at the wild lock of hair fallen across his brow, at the fierce tenderness in his eyes. The music from the grand salon had stopped. Somewhere beyond the walls, the Duchesse was waiting for her to return, and the celebration was still burning bright.

But for this moment, in this dark and bloody antechamber, there was only his hand in hers.

“Help me bind him,” she said. “Then we will take him to the King.”