Read Chapter 39: The New Beginning

The morning light fell across the bed in slanting golden bars, and Marguerite opened her eyes to find Dr. Beaumont seated in the chair beside her, a book open in his lap, his gaze already upon her.

“You are awake,” he said softly. “I was beginning to think you would sleep through your own wedding.”

“Wedding?” Marguerite’s voice came out rough, and she pressed a hand to her throat. The wound beneath her collarbone pulled with the motion, a sharp reminder of the gravel and the dark and the blade that had nearly found her heart.

Beaumont smiled. “You said yes. Three days ago, when the fever broke. I did wonder if you might wish to confirm it now that you are in your right mind.”

Marguerite lay still, letting the memory surface—the cool cloth on her forehead, his voice low and steady in the darkness, the word *yes* trembling from her cracked lips. She had meant it then. She meant it still.

“I confirm it,” she said. “Though I should like to be sitting upright when I do.”

He helped her rise, arranging pillows behind her back with careful hands. The room was small but clean, bright with morning sun, and outside the window she could hear the distant sounds of Paris waking—carters calling, church bells tolling, the rumble of wheels over cobblestones.

“Where are we?” she asked.

“My rooms in the rue Saint-Jacques. I brought you here after—after the palace physicians said they could do nothing more for you.” He paused. “They were wrong. You merely needed time, and rest, and a man who refused to let you go.”

Marguerite looked down at her hands, at the thin gold ring now resting on her finger. She did not remember him placing it there. “And the Duchesse?”

“Safe. A letter arrived two days ago from Lyon. She and Captain Lefèvre are well, and they mean to cross into Savoy by the week’s end.”

The breath left Marguerite in a long, quiet sigh. “And the court? The scandal?”

Beaumont’s mouth curved. “You are a fortnight gone from Versailles, and already the court has found new diversions. The Comtesse de Soissons’s trial proceeds. The King has appointed a new commission on poisons. And I am told that Madame de Maintenon has taken up embroidery with a passion that has set all the ladies of the court scrambling for silk thread.”

Marguerite laughed, then winced as the wound protested. “I shall miss nothing about that place.”

“Then you shall not have to return to it.”

She looked at him—at the lines of exhaustion still etched around his eyes, at the tenderness in his hands as he adjusted her bandages—and felt something settle in her chest, a warmth she had not allowed herself to feel since her mother’s death.

“Paris, then,” she said. “A clinic. The poor who cannot pay for physicians.”

“And the rich who will, to support the poor who cannot.” He took her hand. “I have already found a building near the Hôtel-Dieu, two floors, a courtyard for herbs. The landlord is willing to let us have it for a song if we promise to treat his gout.”

“You have been busy while I slept.”

“I have had nothing else to do but worry and plan. Planning is the easier of the two.”

Marguerite squeezed his fingers. “Then let us begin.”

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It was a full week before the physician deemed her strong enough to leave the bed, and another before she could walk the length of the room without dizziness. But each day she grew stronger, and each day she and Beaumont spoke of the future—of the clinic’s layout, of the herbs she would plant in the courtyard, of the books he would need, of the patients who would come to them with fevers and fractures and secret sorrows.

On the day she was finally well enough to venture outside, Beaumont took her arm and led her not toward the bustle of the city, but back the way they had come.

“Where are we going?” she asked, as the carriage rattled through the familiar gates.

“I thought you might wish to say goodbye.”

Versailles rose before her, stilling her heart with its gilt and its grandeur, its thousand windows flashing in the afternoon sun. She had left it bleeding, carried through the dark in a stranger’s arms. Now she walked through its gardens on her own two feet, her hand resting lightly on Beaumont’s arm, the ring on her finger catching the light.

They walked slowly through the Orangerie, past the fountains and the sculpted hedges, the gravel crunching beneath their feet. Marguerite found she did not flinch at the sound of approaching footsteps, did not scan the shadows for threats. That life was behind her now.

In the north parterre, a young woman in the plain grey of a lady’s maid stood beside a bed of tulips, her cap slightly askew, her hands clutched around a small glass vial. She was weeping—quietly, hopelessly, the tears tracking down her cheeks as she stared at the flower beds as if they held some answer she could not find.

Marguerite released Beaumont’s arm. “Wait for me.”

She crossed the gravel and stopped a few paces from the girl, who looked up with a start and hurriedly wiped her face.

“Forgive me,” the girl said. “I did not see you, madame. Are you lost?”

“No,” Marguerite said gently. “But you seem to be.”

The girl’s lower lip trembled. “I am—I am in service to the Marquise de Valois. She is ill, and the physicians do not know what ails her, and I—I have been told to fetch her a remedy from the apothecary, but I am afraid, I am afraid of what might be in it, and I do not—I do not know what to do.”

Marguerite studied the girl’s face—young, frightened, but with a flicker of intelligence in her eyes. She understood, suddenly, with a clarity that pierced her, that this girl was her, five years ago. Terrified, uncertain, holding a vial she dared not trust.

“What is your name?” Marguerite asked.

“Hélène, madame.”

“Hélène. I was a lady’s maid once. I served the Duchesse de Montfort, and I learned that the palace is full of people who will give you advice, who will tell you what to do, who will put powders in your hand and tell you they are for your own good.” She reached into her pocket and drew out a small vial of smelling salts, the silver filigree worn smooth by years of use. “I also learned that the only person you can truly trust is yourself. Not the physicians. Not the courtiers. Not even your mistress, when the poison runs deep.”

She pressed the vial into Hélène’s hand.

“Trust only your judgment,” Marguerite said. “It is the one thing they cannot take from you. And if you are ever in doubt—if you ever find yourself uncertain—come to Paris. Find the rue Saint-Jacques. Ask for the clinic of Dr. Beaumont and his wife.”

The girl stared at her, the vial clutched tight. “You are the one they speak of,” she whispered. “The one who uncovered the poison.”

“I am the one who survived,” Marguerite said. “That is all. Now dry your eyes, and go back to your mistress. Ask her exactly what ails her. Ask her when it began. Ask her what she has eaten, and who prepared it. The truth is in the details, if you have the courage to look for it.”

Hélène nodded, tucking the vial into her apron pocket. “Thank you, madame. I do not know your name.”

“Marguerite.” She smiled. “Just Marguerite.”

The girl curtsied and hurried away, and Marguerite turned to find Beaumont waiting at the edge of the parterre, his head tilted in quiet amusement.

“I believe you have just become a legend in the making,” he said.

“I have just become a woman who gave a frightened girl a vial of smelling salts,” she replied. “That is enough.”

She took his arm, and they walked away from the palace, away from the fountains and the gilt and the whispers, out through the great gates and into the carriage that would carry them back to Paris, to their new life, to the clinic and the courtyard and the future they had promised each other.

As the carriage pulled away, Marguerite did not look back.

She looked forward.