Scholar of Decay (43 page)

“You want me to poison him, mistress?” The old man’s grip tightened on the bowl of warm water he carried in both hands, and he looked vaguely pleased to have been asked.

“I don’t care what you call it,” Louise snapped. Servants came to the chateau for two reasons—they wanted to know that humped shapes of tooth and claw would never climb through their windows
at night, or they needed a sanctuary and therefore placed what skills they had at the service of the house. This servant had arrived just in front of an angry lynch mob. “Just don’t kill him, and remember that I need him up and functional the night of the ball. I don’t want him wandering around before then.” She stepped aside as a pair of burly servants carried out the stained carpet with Chantel’s body wrapped inside. “At the very least,” she added dryly, “he’s inconveniently messy.”

“Yes, mistress.” His eyes tracked the dripping bundle as it was carried down the hall. “What if he asks about … that?”

Louise showed her teeth. “Isn’t it terrible how giant rats can get into even the best houses?”

“Yes, mistress.”

Turning over the new pieces of the plan, examining each for flaws she couldn’t find, Louise followed Chantel’s body as far as the central hall.

“Dump it in the usual place, mistress?”

“Of course. Use extra weights—she’s family.”

It had been some time since one of the younger members of the family had tried to kill her and, upon reflection, Louise felt almost sorry for the girl. Given time and patience, Chantel might have amounted to something, but she’d made her power play with the lack of subtlety so prevalent in the young, and she’d died learning the one lesson that would have ensured her survival:

Never do your own dirty work.

I Hear We Have a Visitor at the Chateau.”

Louise lifted an ebony brow. “Do you have a problem with that?”

“Should I?” Jacqueline finished removing her gloves and stared levelly at her twin. “I also hear that Lucien and Jean and Chantel are dead.”

The brow lowered, and the other joined it as Louise frowned. Although it wasn’t surprising that Jacqueline, as Lord of Richemulot, knew of the deaths in the family, there were few things she hated more than her sister’s little displays of power. “Lucien killed himself,” she said tersely. “Jean fell into a spiderweb. Chantel attacked me, and I broke her neck.”

“Lucien killed himself?”

If the trap on the figurine had thrown him back into his own mind and killed him there, then, technically, Lucien had killed himself. “Yes.”

“Why?”

“How should I know?”

Jacqueline smiled. “Indeed. How should you know?” Lifting her skirts in one hand, she started up the stairs to the west wing.

“And was your trip a success?” Louise asked, falling into step beside her.

“No.” Jacqueline’s tone gave clear warning that she would not expand on her answer.

Louise hid a satisfied smile at the thought of Jacqueline chasing phantom rumors of Henri Dubois and finding only greater heartache and pain. “I’m so sorry.”

Jacqueline paused at the door to her suite and glanced over at her sister. “Don’t be a hypocrite, Louise,” she said wearily, one hand resting on the latch. “It doesn’t suit you.”

“It doesn’t?” Louise stared at her in such astonishment that Jacqueline had to laugh.

“You’re right; I’m wrong. Hypocrisy suits you very well.”

Louise returned her smile, feeling fonder of her sister at that moment than she had in some time. “Sleep well, Jacqueline. I’ll see you this evening.”

When I’ll kill you, she added silently as the door closed between them.

“Mama?”

Jacqueline set her hairbrush down and turned to face her son. “Were you given permission to come in here?” she asked sternly.

His face fell. “No, Mama.”

“We’ll excuse it this once.” She opened her arms, and he ran into her embrace. “Did you miss me?”

“Oh, yes, Mama!”

“Were you a good boy while I was gone?” When he paused before answering, she held him out at arm’s length. “Well?”

“What exactly would you call good?” he wondered, looking worried.

Jacqueline laughed. “Let’s make it simpler then. Did you break any of Mama’s rules?” He looked so relieved that she laughed again and swept him into another hug, muffling his answering, “No, Mama.” against her breast.

When she released him, he brushed a shock of dark hair back off his face and gazed up at her seriously. “Mama, I have things to tell you.”

“Not now, Jacques. I’ve been traveling all night, and I’m very tired.”

“But, Mama,” he protested as she stood, “Chantel is dead.”

“I know.”

His face fell. “Oh.”

Jacqueline placed one finger under her son’s chin and tilted his head up until she stared into his eyes. “I always know, Jacques. Never forget that.”

“No, Mama.” He sighed deeply. “I mean yes, Mama.”

She smiled down at him. He looked so much like her and so little like his father, he was easy to love. “Later, I’ll want to hear everything you know.”

His face brightened. “I was taking her to see Dmitri when it happened.”

“Jacques, I said later. It’s nearly dawn, and I need to sleep. I expect that the ball tonight will be very tiring.”

“Yes, Mama. Sleep well, Mama.”

She watched him dance out of the room, waited until she heard the outer door close behind him, and made her way to the bed. “I always know,” she repeated as she slid between perfumed sheets, wondering why Louise hadn’t bothered to lie about the recent and frequent visits death had made to the family. Perhaps it was because she knew a lie would be discovered. “Or perhaps she’s smarter than I give her credit for.”

Pont-a-Museau’s best musicians arrived at dusk and began setting up in the gallery that stretched across one end of the chateau’s ballroom. As the sound of strings being carefully tuned floated out from behind the pillars, servants bustled about tending to last-minute details. All three of the massive chandeliers held new candles of hard white beeswax, bleached for purity and guaranteed with the candlemaker’s life not to drip on the dancers below. Piles of wood had been stacked ready in both fireplaces behind iron screens designed to protect against accidental immolation. Purposeful immolation was another problem altogether. Not a crack, not a smut marred the tall windows that glittered along the length of the south wall, and if there were dark stains that would not come out of the hardwood floor, they, too, had been polished until they gleamed.

Outside, the night was clear and cold with the promise of the coming winter in the bite of the wind. The moon, burnished bronze, hung low in the east, and as the sky darkened, a thousand stars, bright enough to draw blood, appeared to join it. The river ran fast and high, and on its banks society prepared for the last entertainment of the season.

“Did you sleep well?”

“I always do.” Jacqueline rose, steaming, from the bath and slid her arms into the offered robe. “But I doubt you came here so early to ask me that. What do you want, Louise?”

“I had an idea that might make tonight’s party more … interesting.”

“Interesting.” Jacqueline repeated both the word and the emphasis as she walked into her bedchamber. “In what way?”

Louise swept her arm toward her sister’s bed, where a crimson silk gown lay spread out over the coverlet. “I thought you might wear this tonight.”

“I always wear black.”

“I know. And so does everyone else.” Her eyes glittered in the candlelight as she leaned toward her twin. “I’ll be wearing a dress exactly like this—I had the seamstress make two, then I killed her. Half our guests will be in a panic trying to figure out which of us is which, and the family will be going crazy trying to figure out what we’re up to.”

Jacqueline glanced up at her sister and frowned. It had been a very long time since they’d played the games so favored by the identical twins in the family, games where a case of mistaken identity could easily conclude with death or dismemberment. “We’re not as identical as we used to be,” she pointed out.

Forcing her hand away from the notch in her ear, Louise shrugged. That one visible scar had complicated this part of the plan. Without it, it would’ve been enough for her to wear black as well. With it, she’d needed Jacqueline’s cooperation. “If we wore our hair the same way …”

“It’s a childish idea, Louise. Childish and mean.” Jacqueline crossed to the bed and held the dress up against her body. The demi-train spilled, like fresh blood, over her bare feet. She smiled. “I like it.”