TWENTY-EIGHT

The Shadow Queen had pulled the curtains against the searing afternoon sun. She had abandoned her stays entirely beneath her India-cotton robe. I could see the sweat running from beneath the turban that hid her hair. She sat limply in her big armchair, her feet, in embroidered Turkish slippers, propped up in front of her on a footstool. She motioned with a listless hand to the chair that stood opposite hers in the tapestried room behind the black reception parlor. Her youngest children could be heard making a racket with a toy drum and tin horn somewhere upstairs. In a corner, old Montvoisin dozed quietly, an open book dropping from between his fingers.

“Orange water?” La Voisin asked, dabbing a little of the sickly sweet cologne on her sweating temples to refresh them, and then handing me the bottle.

“Yes, thank you,” I answered, sponging the cool, alcoholic stuff on my face as the sorceress in turn picked up her fan and worked it busily beneath her chin.

“So,” she said, “they’re in your house…oh, those children, they have given me a headache—Antoine, Antoine! Yes, you! Wake up and go tell Louise to take the children into the garden. I have business with the marquise, here, and I can’t even hear myself think.”

“Invaded is a better word,” I responded glumly, opening my own fan.

“‘Invaded’? Just what are they doing?”

“At this very moment? Boiling down calves’ feet to make beef jelly. The very day they arrived, they went off and rented themselves furniture and charged it to me. Then they commandeered Gilles and the carriage and filled the kitchen with groceries…you know I like to send out for meals. Either that or attend open tables. Now my reception parlor smells of garlic—”

“Calves’-foot jelly is very good for sick people. What does he say?”

“He’s mortified. He said he’s perfectly capable of getting well without calves’-foot jelly and it’s just the sort of thing that would happen to him—”

“When he’d gone to all that trouble to get himself trapped in a fascinating single woman’s house, eh?” The Shadow Queen’s fan stopped its motion and covered the lower half of her face, but I could hear her suppressed snort of laughter. “So, tell me, why haven’t you got rid of them?”

“They threatened to turn me in to the police under the prostitution statutes.”

The Shadow Queen looked grim and shut her fan with a snap. “They don’t know whom they’re playing with,” she said quietly. “‘Young women of the town who try to entrap men of good family into marriage,’ eh?” she quoted. “With a word, I can change that.”

“I don’t want him destroyed,” I said.

“Then you are fond of him, despite everything you say.”

“I love no man. But I’ve paid the surgeon, and I don’t like to lose an investment.” She nodded approvingly. Then her thoughts changed, and she smiled her little pointed smile.

“No man but Lamotte,” she observed, just to watch my face turn all red with embarrassment. “Ha! Don’t hide your face behind your fan. Every woman in Paris loves Lamotte these days. I wouldn’t mind having him myself for a night or two, though there would be no advantage to me in it. Of course, at this point, any woman who crosses the Duchesse de Bouillon would be taking a considerable risk. She’s enjoying advancing Lamotte’s career, and she’s one of my better customers.” A warning.

“I imagine Lamotte himself has to be very careful these days, too,” I observed.

“It is the price of celebrity. To be loved—passionately—on alternate Tuesdays when Monsieur de Vendôme is at the front. There are many who envy him.”

“I hope not all of them are your customers, as well.”

“Only some, my dear. But do not pry into what does not concern you. We have business at hand. I think it best for your career to marry.” She picked up a little silver bell that lay on the table beside the heavy blue glass bottle of orange water.

“Margot, bring some lemonade for the marquise and me. It is perishingly hot.” My stomach made a knot. Whether over the lemonade or marriage, I could not say. “And plenty of sugar,” she called after Margot. “You know I like it sweet.” She did seem to be putting on more weight these days. She must have a lot of things sweet. “You see, my dear,” she went on, “as long as everyone thought you were a hundred-and-fifty-year-old virgin, you ran no risks. As soon as it is known that you have kept a man at your house, you will be open to blackmail, and by far more dangerous sorts of people than these two silly women. But once you are married, you are safe from that and can do as you please.”

She dabbed a bit more orange water on the inside of her wrists and onto the back of her neck, reopened her fan with a brisk shake of her hand, poised it at the level of her bosom, and set it in motion once again. “I can arrange you something very advantageous where you can go your own way. Yes, when you decide you need to get rid of d’Urbec would be the best time. A wedding will shed him nicely.”

I smiled and nodded. Better to have her think I didn’t mind this wedding thing than have her decide to get rid of d’Urbec on her own. I did owe him that much.

“Yes,” she went on in a self-satisfied tone, “I think you should marry. Anyone would do. But a woman should not waste herself when there is something to be gained. An alchemist is always a good match for a fortune-teller. Or an ex-priest who’s kept his canonicals can be very good for business.”

If your business is being a witch, I thought. It’s always convenient to have the Black Mass in the family. The silver lemonade cups clinked invitingly on the tray as Margot brought them in. Old Montvoisin, who had completed his errand and returned to somnolence in his chair, sat up and looked about at the sound. Margot served her mistress first, then me, then Montvoisin, who took a large gulp and wiped his mouth on his sleeve.

“But you, you can aim higher.” La Voisin’s voice, like the lemonade, was sticky sweet. “You should consider a man of position…someone like…Brissac. Yes, Brissac would be perfect.”

“Brissac?” My lemonade nearly overturned into my lap. “Why on earth Brissac? What makes you think he would be open to such an arrangement?”

“Brissac has always lived apart from his duchesse. She has cut him off; he is an encumbrance. Do you understand?” She leaned toward me with a strange, intense smile. “Now he is destitute. His attitude softens daily, as he grows more desperate. He has quarreled with Nevers and is now homeless. Temporarily, he has moved in with hmm…shall we say, another gentleman…who will tire of him soon enough. Just now, however, I have them both in my hand. Their apartment and furniture are rented at my expense. I consider Brissac an…investment. And when I consider your future, I see an excellent way to get repayment for my foresight. If you play your cards right, my dear, his cold little duchesse can be made to vanish. And he has, after all, a more or less genuine title, though he is now brought so low he will prostitute it for your money. You could help him at the tables—and, best of all, you do not have to sleep with him. Just as well, for he is said to smell even worse in bed than Louvois. He will go his way, you will go yours, you will grow rich in partnership, and…you will be protected from the police. It’s ideal.”

This is Brissac’s idea, I thought. What has blinded her to the danger of this idea? Is it cash? How much money will change hands between them when this marriage is completed? “Brissac…” The word tasted nasty in my mouth. “It’s such a shock—You…you must allow me to think it over…”

“Don’t think too long. He may not be poor forever. Just now he has a fancy to win at the tables, so his interest turns to you.”

I didn’t like the sound of it. I don’t need the glass to show me how this marriage will work, I thought. Once I make him rich, he’ll want another bride, one from a great family. Then he’ll visit the Shadow Queen for a little something from her locked cupboard, and I’ll have to start watching what I drink. Unless, of course, I move first.

“Don’t worry, my dear,” La Voisin said, patting my hand almost as if she had read my thoughts. “A titled widow can do almost as well for herself as a wife. And you’d have risen too high through your marriage for the courts to touch you. I always have your interests at heart first. After all, I regard you almost as a daughter.”

“I couldn’t trust my own mother more,” I said, looking at her with innocent, wide eyes over my fan.

The wave of garlic mingled with the steamy smell of boiling beef overwhelmed me when I entered my own front parlor. “Any invitations, Mustapha?” I asked hopefully.

“No, just a visitor with a crate for Monsieur d’Urbec.” Mustapha took a fan from his wide Turkish sash and began lazily stirring the sultry air into a breeze about his face. “Enjoy yourself upstairs, Madame,” his sarcastic voice followed me up the staircase. Entering my once-beautiful rooms, now crammed with alien furniture, I was entrapped by one of my uninvited guests.

“At last, my poor nephew has spoken from his bed of pain…” I had a vision of d’Urbec turning his face to the wall, deadly silent with pure annoyance, for hours at a time. “…and the first words through his pale, fevered lips were to exonerate you.”

“Exonerate me?”

“Oh, how could I have ever suspected your charity? To risk a woman’s most precious asset, her reputation, to rescue a hero from a hideous cabal of assassins. You are a saint.” How interesting, I thought. D’Urbec has come to the obvious conclusion that once a story has been started, there is no way to dislodge it except with another, even better, one. “It is exactly like a romance…” His aunt clasped her hands before her heart.

“Why, yes, it is, now that you mention it,” I couldn’t help responding. An irritated growl came from the antechamber, which made us both turn our heads.

“I tell you, Mother, I can’t have another sip of it! I’m sloshing in beef broth.”

“Florent, what’s the big box here by the door? Is it yours?” I poked my head into the antechamber to see d’Urbec propped up on pillows; his mother, with a large bowl of soup in her lap, was sitting on the bed beside him, holding an immense spoon. An altogether droll situation for the hero of a court cabal to be in. When he spied me, he blushed. Obviously, he’d heard everything.

“You seem embarrassed, Monsieur d’Urbec,” I observed rather pointedly.

“Only that I cannot rise to greet you as befits your rank, my dear Marquise,” he responded, his voice weak, but ironic.

“Who brought the crate?” I asked. “Is it more food?”

“Griffon came by to see how I was doing—to wish me well, and say good-bye. Didn’t he, Mother?” The little woman on the bed looked up with singular annoyance and set the spoon back into the bowl with a clank.

“It is commendable loyalty that you maintain an old friendship, but why you needed to accept as a parting gift a crateful of scandalous publications, I do not know. The bottom of the river is the proper place for things like that,” she said firmly.

“Parting gift?” My eyebrows went up.

“Griffon is selling out. Every day, he says, he runs more risks and makes less money. He found a publisher of Jansenist tracts to buy his press and he’s emigrating to Rotterdam, where he says a man can print whatever he likes. He brought me a gift—the stuff he can’t risk leaving or smuggling over the border.”

“Some gift,” I said. “I thought he was your friend.”

“That’s exactly what I said,” sniffed Madame d’Urbec, with a righteous nod in my direction. “Imagine bothering a sick man with things like that.”

“He meant well,” answered d’Urbec, defending his friend. “It’s an entire stock-in-trade…” Griffon had left him an income, for when he recovered. My eyes met d’Urbec’s. Neither of us could say more, for fear of disillusioning his mother about her son’s current occupation.

“I suppose Lamotte…ah…de la Motte told him where to find you.”

“He’s been very active on my behalf lately.” D’Urbec sighed.

“Now that is the friend you should cultivate,” said his mother. “Someone who can do things for you. You must curb your taste for low company, Florent. As I’ve always said, it takes no more effort to maintain a friendship with a significant person than an insignificant one. I mean it for your good, Florent. You waste your talent. Besides, you have no more room for mistakes.”

“Yes, Mother,” he said with resignation.

“And don’t use that tone with me. You don’t know what it is, facing your uncle’s stuck-up wife, that barren old stick, after that last little…misunderstanding of yours. Her airs, her fancy hat, the way she steps in those silk slippers, as if her feet were too good for the ground, unlike everybody else’s! Oh, how I want to see her face when you are great. Why, the last time I saw her at the draper’s, even the lackey carrying her train snubbed me! ‘I hope you understand, dear sister, that we can no longer associate with your son after…what has happened. Believe me, no one regrets it more than I. The years we sponsored his education—a pity—I suppose we had no right to expect gratitude. But our position, you know.’ Her position!” she snorted indignantly.

But she was cut short by Mustapha, who had barely time to announce “The Chevalier de la Motte,” with an ironic flourish before Lamotte himself bounded in, filled with a genuine enthusiasm that seemed altogether unconquered by the oppressive heat and garlic.

“So much joy to see you better, d’Urbec!” he announced. “A mother’s love—the all-powerful curative. Why, it’s a miracle!” D’Urbec glared up at Lamotte while his mother accepted the compliment with a grateful blush. D’Urbec seemed irritated.

“And what is that that smells so delightfully of garlic downstairs?” Lamotte’s charm filled the room like a scent.

“An old family secret—a restorative broth. My children have loved it since they were small. They owe their health to it.” She beamed.

“Oh my goodness, my dear Chevalier, how gracious of you to visit.” D’Urbec’s aunt, not to be left out, had trailed in behind him. Then Sylvie appeared from nowhere and began dusting the furniture—low down, where the view of Lamotte’s famous calves was better. “What lovely shoes!” exclaimed d’Urbec’s aunt. “Of course, in Orleans, we hardly ever see anything so elegant!” Lamotte’s shoes, with their high red heels and silk bows, set off the celebrated calves even more. He was in yellow silk, with a narrow falling band of exquisite lace. A wide plumed hat sat atop his magnificently expensive wig of tightly curled, pale blond human hair.

“I just meant to pop in while I was in town and see how you were doing today—I’m terribly busy just now. So many arrangements…They’re rehearsing my new play for presentation at court, and I’m off to Fontainebleau to make sure it’s done properly. The last light comedy of the season, before the winter of tragedy sets in. Then the stage is ruled by absolutely dreary verse and tragic queens. Though they say Monsieur Racine is planning something that will quite overtop the throng. We wait, we wait, but Racine reads bits and pieces at salons, always preparing, never finishing. I say he has exhausted his genius. No, the world awaits my next tragedy without rivals.” He glanced at the women to find them staring at him with admiration, and a little smile of self-satisfaction flitted across his face. “Say, d’Urbec, what’s in that crate outside? It looks like one of Griffon’s.”

“It is. He’s leaving, you know.”

“So I heard, so I heard. Let me satisfy my curiosity and see what he’s left you.” The train of women followed him into the next room.

“The man’s a blasted magnet for women,” announced d’Urbec to me, as I lingered.

“Aha, broadsides,” we heard coming from beyond the open door. “Madame de Brinvilliers—execrable verse. ‘Man slays himself and family in front of tax collector’—that’s old. Oh, here’s a new one: ‘Infernal Machine Discovered in Toulon Harbor—a Conspiracy of Traitors, Attempts to Explode Flagship, et cetera, Ingenious self-igniting clockwork fuse—’” There was a faint shriek from one of the women.

“Stop him. Shut him up. That busybody Lamotte—” D’Urbec tried to get up. Then he winced and thought better of it. “Go see to Mother, Geneviève—this is a disaster in the making. Tell Lamotte to keep that thing from her.”

I hastened into my own bedroom to find Lamotte sitting on the bed cheerfully reading the details of a conspiracy against His Majesty’s fleet at Toulon harbor to the attentive crowd of women. But Madame d’Urbec was deathly pale, her hands clasped tight. Mistaking her feelings, Lamotte cried, “Don’t be alarmed, Madame, the King’s police will trace the conspirators and execute them without delay.”

“Enough, Lamotte. Madame d’Urbec has become ill through overwork. Madame, sit here…”

“Oh, dear Lord, oh, he’s done it. He’s the only one who could have—my Olivier, my son. Why have my sons been born to trouble? Oh, I must go to him—”

“Why, this is terrible,” cried Lamotte. “Hey, lackey, some wine for Madame. She’s gone all pale.” I took advantage of the moment to snatch up the broadside from where he had set it down and shut it back in the crate.

When Gilles had brought the wine, I said quietly, “Gilles, take this crate and put it—You know.”

“Understood, Madame,” he said, and hoisted the heavy thing to take it down to the cellar, where there was a secret door hidden behind the wine bottles.

“We must pack at once, Marie-Claude. The next diligence—if only it’s not too late.” Madame d’Urbec’s voice was weak as her sister fanned her where she lay, half fainting, in my best armchair.

“Mesdames, I will offer the use of my patroness’s carriage and footmen to see you to the diligence at whatever hour you may wish to depart. The very least I can do for the honored mother of a dear friend,” said Lamotte with a flourish. She looked up gratefully at him, as if half in love already.

“Madame d’Urbec, may I be of assistance?” I asked, suppressing all signs of emotion from my voice and face. The little woman sat down suddenly in her hired armchair and burst into tears. Taking a large handkerchief out of her sleeve, she wiped at her face in between sobs.

“Oh, what can you, with your rank and ease…and all of this…a lovely town house of your own…gowns, nice furniture…”—she sniffled and wiped her eyes again—“…what can you understand of the grief of being a mother? Six sons I have, and every one a giver of grief. Taxes! Religion! Politics! The old law! The new law! All the things polite people don’t mention. But them—they are human incendiaries, every one. It’s a family curse, from their father’s side. Oh, God, if they were only daughters, it would be so much easier…”

She sobbed for a while in the midst of the packing chaos, then put away her handkerchief and went into the next room to bid farewell to her son. She emerged dry-eyed and announced: “Madame de Morville, I could not leave my son in more capable hands. God bless you for your charitable act. The furniture can be returned to the tapissier on the rue de Charonne just beyond the ramparts. Just send word and they’ll remove it. Here’s the account; don’t let them overcharge you.” And she was gone in a flurry of emotion, Lamotte at her elbow, her sister trailing behind, having left the calves’ feet still boiling in the kitchen.

“Well,” sighed d’Urbec, lifting his head from the pillow, “there goes my mother and my life savings.”

“Don’t worry, Florent,” I said. “I’ll see that you’re buried properly.” He gave me a swift, sharp look.

“I have every intention of living. I wish to erase the memory of this romantic disaster.”

“First, tell me what it was all about. Mustapha, if you must listen in, don’t be so obtrusive.” The curled-up toe of Mustapha’s little Turkish slipper withdrew from view behind the half-open door. D’Urbec sighed and looked at his hands.

“Father would be rich, you know, if he had an ounce of sense. He’s a first-class clockwork builder and inherited a good business. But he spends his time grieving over lost titles, tracing his ancestors, seeking unwary patrons for his fantastical schemes, and dreaming of being awarded a pension and a title for one of his pet projects. It’s Olivier, my older brother, who keeps everything together. In my opinion, he’s even better than Father at designing mechanisms and considerably more practical. So, you see, it’s only natural that when Mother saw that an infernal machine with an unusual clockwork fuse had been found in the Toulon harbor, knowing the family predilections, she leaped to conclusions. That’s all. My mother is one of those who lives for drama. I suppose we all do, after a fashion…”

“But what’s all this about a family curse? That is, besides being secret frondeurs and, as I gather from your aunt’s busy tongue, heretics?”

“I’d hardly count the reformed religion as heresy. Besides, thanks to Uncle, I’m probably a better, or at least a more recent, Catholic than you are. Uncle put the conversion bonus to good work and insisted I do the same.”

“And because you don’t believe in anything, anyway, it didn’t matter either way, did it?”

“I believe in any number of things, Mademoiselle Pasquier. Truth, justice, the powers of the rational mind…”

“Not very popular things to believe in, in my opinion. No wonder you’re always in trouble. That’s family curse enough, thinking things like that.”

He lay back on the pillow, his eyes fixed on me, calculating. He was silent a long time. “Damn!” he said sadly.

“What’s wrong?” I asked. “Would you like more calves’ foot broth? It won’t jell in this heat.”

“You’re in love with Lamotte, aren’t you? You don’t have to be embarrassed about it. Most women are. But…I had hoped you were above the common taste…” I averted my eyes from his disappointed face.

“I’m not in love with anybody…and I have important appointments today,” I heard myself saying as I fled the room.

The very next day, at the end of another long, sticky afternoon when most of Paris found nothing better to do than to doze behind closed shutters, I returned home from a visit to the suburbs to find an immense sheaf of yellow roses lying in a box on the downstairs table. The whole household was on the shadowy lower floor with the curtains drawn against the all-pervasive heat. Mustapha was fanning himself while d’Urbec, draped in a sheet like a toga, for want of a dressing gown, was seated in my best armchair reading aloud to the assembled company. Gilles was sitting near the kitchen door on a low stool polishing the silver, and Sylvie had laid claim to my second-best armchair, where she sat darning stockings as they listened.

“So, not only does no one see fit to open the door for me, but you all—Oh, what’s that?” I broke off the irritated lecture I planned to give when I spied the little mountain of flowers. Sylvie hastily removed herself from my chair and drew out another stool from the kitchen.

“We have refrained from even reading the card until your return,” d’Urbec said. He was looking better, but something inside his soul seemed to have changed. The eyes that followed me about the room were distant and cynical.

“Just as well in this house,” I answered, and, putting my gloves back on, I carefully lifted the heavy, engraved card out of the box, shaking it gently before reading it. I could feel d’Urbec’s eyes missing nothing. “Oh, ugh, Brissac. The news certainly gets around quickly.” I gave Sylvie a hard stare, and she looked as intently at the darning egg as if it were about to hatch. “The lavender ribbons—Looks like La Pelletier’s work, doesn’t it? Harmless, then. It will be love powder this time.” I ran a gloved finger between the yellow petals. A few greenish crystals stuck to my glove. “Bastard,” I said. “Sylvie, put a wet kerchief around your mouth and nose and go shake these flowers out the back door before you put them in the vase. I like yellow roses, so I’m not going to throw them out.”

“You appear to know a great deal more about the world, Marquise, than the little girl who read Petronius in secret.”

“We live and learn, Monsieur d’Urbec,” I said as I watched Sylvie flounce out through the kitchen, carrying the flowers. “Love powders, inheritance powders, lovely scented Italian gloves—the fashionable world is not for fools these days—or for cowards, either.” I turned to see his dark-rimmed eyes fixed on me, calculating.

“The Duc de Brissac is interested in you, I take it? You must beware of a friendship like that.” His voice was even. “Brissac is a ruinous spendthrift who bankrupts his mistresses and…other friends. As a professional nouvelliste, I will be delighted to provide you with particulars.” Something about him seemed to have changed.

“Well, Monsieur le Nouvelliste, if I can rely on the laws of hospitality keeping your professional interest quiet, I will tell you that what he wants this time is marriage—a secret marriage of convenience. He has been reduced to owning two shirts and being supported by my patroness. For all I know, he probably even borrowed the money for those flowers from her. He hopes by joining forces with me to regain all his losses at the card tables.”

“His current wife proves no deterrent to his plans, eh? And I suppose as the Duchesse de Brissac, you’ll have a very fine tomb indeed, once his fortune is mended.”

“From him? That stingy bastard? Only if I order it right after the wedding and pay for it myself.” I laughed as I took the vase from Sylvie and arranged it on the sideboard. “To what sculptor do you think I should give the commission for my monument? Warin? Or is he falling out of fashion these days?”

“You don’t have to accept him, you know, just because I’ve compromised you,” he said quietly.

“I compromised myself when I opened the door. It was my choice. And I choose not to be married. I’ll make my own way.”

D’Urbec looked at me long and hard, his jaw clenched. Then he announced in a bantering voice that didn’t ring quite true, “If a man with no shirt were not even more ludicrous than a man with two shirts in making an offer of marriage, I would propose to undo the damage I have done in the only honorable way open to me. As it is, I must beg your indulgence for a few more days and borrow from you a sheet of paper, pen, and ink.”

As I went to fetch the paper and ink, I heard Sylvie ask, “What are you planning?” Her voice sounded shocked.

“This is a historic moment. You are witnessing the foundation of the fortune of the house of d’Urbec,” he said in a grim tone, and the tension in the room was heavier than the sultry summer air. He took out the pen and wrote.

“A denunciation,” he announced, “from an Italian abbé who has perused a dreadful, irreligious work of scandal that should be brought to the attention of the inspector of the book trade and suppressed. The irreligious and mocking Parnasse Satyrique. Griffon has left me two hundred copies of this salacious work as my founding capital. An official condemnation will raise the price from twenty sous to twenty livres. An intelligent man may multiply a stock of two thousand livres through many means in this capital of quick money. The only advantage my life has brought me is that I know where corrupt fortunes are born and how quickly they make one respectable. Madame de Morville, I shall now become rich—rich enough to send my old mother a carriage and horses and a new bonnet fit to cause apoplexy in my uncle’s wife. Rich enough to buy back my place in the world.” He poured sand on the letter to dry it, then shook it off. “Here, Sylvie, I would like you to deliver this to the police,” he said, dripping wax across the folded edge of the letter. “I know you know how.” Sylvie looked at me, her eyes questioning.

“Yes, Sylvie, go ahead. It’s all right. You can count on our discretion, Monsieur d’Urbec.”

“Thank you,” he answered. I was suddenly frightened of him, of his determination, of the strange look on his face. He seemed like a man capable of anything.

Watching my face, he handed the ink and paper to Sylvie to put back in the cabinet from which I had removed them. His movement shifted the sheet to reveal the edge of the seared mark on his shoulder. I saw his eyes turn bitter as he caught my quickly averted gaze.

“I can’t read pictures in water, Athena, but I’ll make a prediction about you. You need to find out Lamotte is not your mental equal before you’ll have me.”

“What makes you think I want either of you?” I sniffed.

“Have you forgotten I am not stupid? Your eyes betrayed you. Did you have me in only to bring him here? That is not beyond your scheming mind, I know. What is it that glittered so attractively in front of those greedy gray eyes of yours? Was it the silk stockings? Was it his dreadful poetry? Or was it the cow eyes he can’t help making whenever there’s a woman around? When you grow up, little vixen, you’ll know where to find me.”

“You’re nasty, Florent d’Urbec!” I exclaimed, to hide my humiliation at having been seen through so easily. “What is it you want from me? That I should give everything up to go with you and be nothing at all? Haven’t I already risked all I have for you? What is enough for a man? Must they own everything they see? Even that ridiculous satanist Brissac offers me a partnership, disgusting as it is.”

His face paled, then, eyes blazing with anger, he shouted, “Geneviève Pasquier, you will regret ever saying this to me, I swear.” But his anger made me defiant. I stared right back at him and shrugged my shoulders.

“Oh, la, revenge. Everybody wants it these days. It led me to the Shadow Queen, and now I never smell roses anymore. Where will it lead you, Florent d’Urbec? But at least I have a monster who wronged me as the worthy object of my revenge, and not a woman who’s risked harm to do me nothing but good. Someday you must tell me more about this celebrated brain of yours, my friend, and how you use it to distinguish who’s worth taking vengeance on.”

He didn’t speak to me for the next two days. On the third day he borrowed a needle from Sylvie and, with the finicky exactness of a longtime bachelor, mended his shirt, from which several washings had removed the bloodstains.

“I’ll be going now,” he said. “I’ll send for my box when I’ve found a place to live.”

“You don’t have anywhere?” I asked, suddenly anxious. He still looked wasted and feverish. He swayed as he stood in the doorway, and I realized that only pride held him upright.

“I was living in the back room of Griffon’s print shop. He and his family lived above. The Jansenists probably won’t be as congenial.”

“But—Will I see you again?”

“Oh, that? Yes, of course. On the Cours-la-Reine in a carriage and four. Good-bye, Madame de Morville. Don’t smell any flowers.”

I fled upstairs, weeping stupid tears for no reason at all.