Read Chapter 8: The Apothecary's Ledger

The rue Saint-Honoré at dawn was a different creature than the glittering avenue Marguerite knew by daylight. Shuttered shopfronts leaned together like conspirators, and the cobblestones gleamed with the night's rain. She pressed herself against a cold wall as a cart rumbled past, its driver hunched against the chill, and tried to still the hammering of her heart.

Dr. Beaumont walked beside her, his physician's cloak wrapped tight against the morning air. He had not spoken since they left the carriage two streets back, and his silence had a weight to it that Marguerite did not care to examine.

"The shop is here," he said, stopping before a narrow door painted a faded green. A wooden sign above it bore a mortar and pestle, the paint chipped and peeling. No name. No advertisement of wares. In a city where apothecaries hung gilded symbols of their craft like jewelry, this one seemed to want to be overlooked.

"You are certain this is Masson's establishment?"

"I have been here once before." Beaumont's hand rested on the latch. "I did not enter. I have regretted that cowardice ever since."

Marguerite thought of the signed testimony folded in the inner pocket of her dress, heavy as a stone against her ribs. She thought of her mother's face, the way the candlelight had caught the hollows of her cheeks in those final days. "Then let us not regret this morning."

The shop's interior smelled of dried lavender and something sharper beneath it—bitter almonds, perhaps, or the ghost of a poison that had lingered in the timbers. Shelves lined the walls, crowded with glass jars and ceramic pots, their labels written in a cramped hand Marguerite could not quite read at this distance. Behind a counter of dark oak, a man looked up from a ledger, his spectacles perched low on a nose that had been broken at least once.

"Monsieur Masson?" Beaumont's voice carried the easy authority of a man accustomed to being listened to.

The apothecary did not rise. His eyes moved from Beaumont to Marguerite, then back, and his thin mouth curved into something that was not quite a smile. "Dr. Beaumont. I wondered when you might find your way to my door."

"You know me."

"I know everyone who matters in this city, Doctor. It is how I stay in business." Masson closed the ledger with a deliberate snap. "What can I do for you? A tincture for the nerves? A remedy for sleepless nights?" His gaze slid to Marguerite. "A cream to restore a lady's complexion, perhaps?"

Marguerite felt her skin prickle. He knew. The words were too precise, too pointed. He knew who she served, knew what she had taken from his shelves or from whatever dark corner of his trade supplied the Comtesse.

Beaumont stepped forward, placing both hands on the counter. "I have a more specific need, Monsieur. I require access to your records."

Masson laughed, a dry sound like stones grinding together. "My records are my own affair. The College of Physicians does not regulate my ledgers, and I doubt you have come with a warrant from the King."

"I have come with something better." Beaumont reached into his purse and withdrew a small velvet pouch. He loosened its drawstring and tipped a handful of gold louis onto the counter. They caught the weak morning light and glowed there, obscene in their brightness. "Fifty livres. For ten minutes of your time and a single page of your ledger."

Masson stared at the coins for a long moment. When he looked up, his eyes had sharpened with calculation. "Which page?"

"The page concerning the Duchesse de Montfort."

The apothecary's expression flickered—loss of certainty, a brief crack in his composure. "The Duchesse? A regrettable business, that cream. I warned the lady who commissioned it that the formula was... strong. But she insisted." He shrugged. "I am a tradesman, Doctor. I do not question the purposes of my clients."

"You sold poison to a woman who intended to kill the Duchesse de Montfort."

"I sold a cosmetic preparation to the Comtesse de Vaudreuil," Masson corrected, his voice mild. "What she did with it is her own concern. The law does not hold me accountable for the intentions of others." His gaze moved to the gold again. "But fifty livres for a look at my records? That is an unusual request. It suggests you are not merely curious. It suggests you are building a case."

"Perhaps I am."

"Then you will want more than the Duchesse's page." Masson reached beneath the counter and produced a thick ledger bound in cracked leather. He opened it with the reverence of a priest handling scripture. His finger traced down columns of cramped writing, past names Marguerite caught in snatches—the Comtesse de Something, a marquis, a lady of the chamber whose husband had died suddenly the previous winter. All the venomous secrets of Versailles, written in plain ink.

"Here," Masson said, turning the book toward them. "The Duchesse's purchases."

Marguerite leaned in. There it was, in a hand she recognized from the delivery note that had accompanied the cream: *Duchesse de Montfort—nourishing cream, four jars.* A date. A price paid in full. And then, just below, in the same column:

*Mlle de la Mothe—belladonna, large quantity.*

The blood drained from Marguerite's face. Mlle de la Mothe. The name meant nothing to her—no title, no household she could place, but there it was, linked to the most lethal substance she knew short of the poison that had killed her mother.

"Do you know this customer?" Beaumont asked, his voice carefully neutral.

Masson's eyes narrowed. "I know all my customers, Doctor. But I do not discuss their identities without sufficient... incentive."

"Then we shall require a second page."

The coins multiplied on the counter—another fifty livres, pressed forward with a physician's steady hand. Masson's fingers twitched toward them, and for a moment Marguerite thought he would take the bribe and give them the name.

Then the shop door banged open.

A serving boy stood in the threshold, red-faced and breathless. "Monsieur Masson! The Provost's men are coming up the street. They're searching the tradesmen's quarter."

Masson's face went white. In a single motion he swept the ledger from the counter and shoved it into a drawer, then scooped the gold coins into his apron pocket. "Out the back. Now, if you value your skins."

Beaumont seized Marguerite's arm and pulled her toward a curtained doorway at the rear of the shop. She stumbled over the threshold and into a narrow alley, the door slamming shut behind them. Through the gap between the curtain and the frame, she glimpsed Masson composing his features into a mask of innocence, the ledger already hidden from view.

They stood in the alley, breath misting in the cold air, and listened to the Provost's men hammer on the shop door.

"The ledger," Marguerite whispered. "We did not copy the page."

"No." Beaumont's jaw was tight. "And now Masson will know we were asking after the Duchesse. He will warn his clients. The Comtesse will know we are closing in."

"Then we must move faster than she expects." Marguerite pressed her hand to her chest, where her mother's locket lay hidden beneath her dress—and with it, the remaining poison she had never confessed to Beaumont. "We tell the Duchesse everything. Today. Before the Comtesse can strike again."

Beaumont looked at her for a long moment, and in his eyes she saw the weight of the knowledge he carried—that the Comtesse was protected by powers at court that could crush them both like insects beneath a heel. But he only said, "Then we had best return to Versailles before the sun rises fully."

They slipped down the alley and into the awakening streets, but Marguerite could not shake the name burned into her memory:

*Mlle de la Mothe.*

A mystery beside a mystery. And somewhere behind them, a ledger that held the answers was slipping beyond reach.