Lire le chapitre 24: The Unmasking

Marguerite had not dared to look at the register since they fled the safe house. The names burned in her memory, but the physical proof—that black leather book with its damning entries—was heavier than any jewel she had ever carried for the Duchesse. She pressed it against her ribs as she climbed the private staircase to the Duchesse's apartments, her breath short, her mind racing through the words she would speak.

The Duchesse was seated by the window, pale but alert, a shawl draped over her thin shoulders. Dr. Beaumont stood near the door, his arms folded, his face a mask of professional neutrality. He had insisted on being present. Marguerite had not objected.

"You found something," the Duchesse said without preamble. Her voice was still weak, but it held the steel of a woman who had survived weeks of slow poisoning and was now furious at the world.

Marguerite placed the register on the small table before her mistress. She opened it to the marked page, her finger tracing the entry. "His name. Armand de Montfort. Regular purchases of arsenic, beginning last autumn. Each order marked 'sur ordre'—upon order."

The Duchesse's face did not change. She read the entry once, then again. Her fingers trembled, but her gaze was steady. "Bring him to me."

"No," Marguerite said softly. "He is your husband. He must come willingly."

The Duchesse laughed—a dry, bitter sound. "My husband has been buying poison to pour into my tea. I will not grant him the dignity of a summons."

It was Beaumont who broke the silence. "The amounts listed here are consistent with a chronic dose, not a single act. If he began last autumn, he knew. He knew for months."

Armand de Montfort was found in the library, pretending to read a volume of philosophy. He rose when Marguerite entered, his face betraying a flicker of surprise, then guilt so quickly suppressed she nearly missed it. He was a handsome man, the Duc, with dark hair and a smile that had charmed half of Versailles. But that smile did not reach his eyes today.

"The Duchesse requests your presence," Marguerite said. She kept her voice measured, court-trained. "In her private apartments."

He paused, the book still in his hands. "Requests? Or commands?"

"She is too weak to command. But she asks."

He set the book down. "And you, her lady's maid, are the messenger? How curious. Where is her usual footman?"

"Dr. Beaumont is with her. The footman has been dismissed for the afternoon." Marguerite held his gaze. She would not look away. She had looked into the face of death in that safe house; a guilty aristocrat was nothing now.

Armand walked ahead of her down the corridor, his stride measured, too calm. When they reached the door, she caught his arm—lightly, barely a touch. He turned, surprised.

"Your sister loves you," Marguerite said quietly. "Whatever you have done, whatever you are about to confess, remember that."

His face crumpled for just a moment—a crack in the elegant porcelain—and then he smoothed it away and entered the room.

The Duchesse had risen from her chair. She stood by the window, the register open in her hands, her chin raised. She looked like a queen awaiting a traitor's plea.

Armand stopped at the threshold. He saw the register. He saw the page. And something inside him—the last thread of denial, perhaps—snapped.

"It was never meant for her," he said, the words rushing out of him like water from a broken dam. "I sold information to the Comtesse. I owed her money—gambling debts, terrible debts—and she offered to forgive them if I passed along details of Élise's health, her habits, her medicines. I thought it was harmless. A woman's curiosity, a bit of court gossip. I never knew she would use it. I never knew she would _poison_ her."

The Duchesse stared at him. "You sold me," she said, her voice cracking. "You sold my body, my blood, my mornings and my nights, to a woman who wanted me dead."

"No!" Armand fell to his knees. It was not a theatrical gesture; he landed hard, the sound of his knees hitting the parquet echoing through the room. "I loved you. I love you still. I was blind, Élise. I was a fool. But I did not know. The arsenic—I bought it, yes, because she told me she needed it for her husband's rats. Her estate has a vermin problem, she said. She paid me well for each purchase. I thought—I thought I was helping a business partner."

"The Comtesse has no husband," the Duchesse said coldly. "She has been a widow for eleven years."

Armand's face went slack. "She said—"

"She lied." The Duchesse turned away, her hand gripping the window trim. "And you let her. You let her use you as her purse and her pawn, and now my blood is full of arsenic and the court is whispering that I poisoned myself for attention."

"No. No, Élise, please." He crawled forward—actually crawled, like a dog, his fine coat dragging over the floor. Marguerite felt a strange pity for him, looking up at his sister with desperate, wet eyes. But pity was not enough. Pity did not undo months of poison.

"I was a chess piece," he said, his voice thick with tears. "But I was her piece, not the queen's. I never moved against you. I swear on our mother's grave."

"Your mother's grave." The Duchesse laughed again, that hollow laugh. "You sold me for gambling debts. You bought arsenic with the family name. And you expect me to forgive you because you swear on a grave?"

Armand broke down entirely. The proud Duc, the darling of the salons, wept on the floor of his sister's sickroom, his shoulders shaking, his words half-intelligible between sobs. "I'll do anything. I'll go to the King, confess everything, name the Comtesse a hundred times over. I'll leave court, I'll sell my holdings, I'll live in exile for the rest of my life. Just don't cast me off. You're all I have, Élise. You're all I've ever had."

The Duchesse watched him for a long moment, and Marguerite watched the Duchesse. There was something terrible in that stillness—a woman measuring a brother's love against his betrayal, finding it wanting.

"You will leave Versailles," the Duchesse said at last, her voice flat. "You will leave tonight, without ceremony and without farewell. You will return to Montfort and remain there, under our father's supervision, until I decide what to do with you."

Armand looked up, hope flickering through his tears. "Then you forgive me?"

"I do not forgive you." The Duchesse's words dropped like stones into still water. "I disown you. You are no longer my brother. You are no longer a Montfort. You are a gambler and a fool who nearly cost me my life, and I will not carry that weight with me another hour."

"But—"

"Leave." Her voice rose, cracking with emotion. "Leave this room. Leave this palace. If I see your face again before you depart, I will summon the King's guard and have you arrested for attempted murder. That is my mercy, Armand. Take it or leave it."

He opened his mouth to speak, but Dr. Beaumont stepped forward, taking his arm with firm hands. "Duc," he said, his voice gentle but unyielding. "You should not stay."

Armand allowed himself to be led to the door. But at the threshold, he turned, one last time. His eyes met Marguerite's.

He smiled—a broken, bitter smile. "You think you've won," he whispered. "But the Comtesse was never the one pulling the threads. You've caught a fish while the shark still swims. Be careful, mademoiselle. They will come for the one who holds the list next."

And then he was gone, his footsteps fading down the corridor, leaving an impossible silence in his wake.

Marguerite turned to the Duchesse, who sat heavily in her chair, her face pale and drawn. The register remained open on the table, the entry of her brother's purchases glaring up like an accusation.

"Madame," Marguerite said softly, "he mentioned the Comtesse was not the one pulling the threads. And the register has other names. Older names."

The Duchesse looked at her. "What names?"

Marguerite hesitated. Then she opened the register to the back pages, where the ink was faded, the handwriting different—a looping, elegant script from another era. She pointed to the entry dated twenty years past.

"Clémence," she said. "Clémence de Montfort. Purchased small amounts of arsenic over six months. And then the entries stop—she married, or vanished, or died." She looked up at her mistress. "Did your family have a Clémence?"

The Duchesse's face went white—whiter than it already was. She reached for the register, her fingers trembling, and read the words as if they were written in blood.

"Clémence was my aunt," she whispered. "My father's sister. She disappeared when I was a child. We were told she ran away with a servant. We never spoke of her again."

Marguerite felt ice grip her spine. The Baron's words echoed in her ears: _You resemble a woman who disappeared twenty years ago in another poison affair._

"Madame," she said, her own voice barely steady, "what did your aunt look like?"

The Duchesse looked up, and slow recognition dawned in her eyes—recognition that had nothing to do with politics or poison, and everything to do with the face that had been serving her tea for two months.

"Like you," the Duchesse breathed. "She looked like you."