The Chevalier (Châteaux and Shadows) (17 page)

“What did you mean by poison?” he whispered to Mademoiselle de Fouet.

“Lots of rumors. A few arrests. Haven’t you been paying attention?” She didn’t sound bitter, just tired.

“I’ve been here only three days and was worried about staggering around in funny shoes and not getting myself run through by your beau every morning, Mademoiselle de Fouet. I’ve told you I don’t listen to spiteful gossip.”

She glanced at him, her mouth pursed. “Even the tamest gossip probably has roots in something. Not all gossip is spiteful. Some is news. Some recent deaths have been due to poison.”

“Among my mother’s group?”

She shook her head. “That’s a good point. Even so, Madame Philinte always has good news. Or doesn’t believe the bad.”

“And you, Mademoiselle?” For some reason, this felt important. Like his future rode on her answer.

“I listen, Monsieur Emmanuel. I listen and learn how not to be the subject of gossip. I am safe.”

Manu shook his head, disappointed.

Down another corridor and up another set of stairs and they were at the baronesse’s apartments. Manu was surprised his father knew where his mother’s rooms were. He probably had learned his estranged wife’s location to best avoid it.

The maid opened the door, then stepped back with a look of horror. He thought it was at her mistress’ condition, but he soon realized it was at his father’s presence. She looked even more frightened when she saw Dominique and Aurore, then rushed off to open her mistress’s bed.

They crowded into his mother’s bedchamber, where he had not set foot in the days he slept on the drawing room floor. He was surprised to see the only furniture was a shabby bedstead, one chair, and a small mirror. At least the feather mattress appeared thick and comfortable. The small landscape paintings from when he was a boy were missing. He used to sit in her room alone and dream of riding his pony—the one he would surely have someday—through the fields and forests.

“Did she sell her dressing table?” Manu asked, then wished he hadn’t.

Mademoiselle de Fouet scowled at him. “I believe she left it in Paris.”

“She sold it,” the maid whispered.

“If she was having money troubles, she could have asked me,” the baron grunted.

Maman was too proud to ask for anything. She complained constantly, but she didn’t beg.

Manu’s father bent over the bed, rubbing his wife’s hands. Dom pulled the chair across the tiny room, and the baron sat. “Her hands are so cold.” The baron’s voice was choked with tears.

“Papa.” Aurore’s satin train rushed and swished against the floor. She put her hand on their father’s shoulder, and he sat up straighter.

Manu couldn’t stand to look at his father’s tears. He was also confused by them. His parents were not even friendly.

The baron swallowed. “She’s so thin. Thinner than a few weeks ago in the country. How long has she been ill?”

They all looked around, none of them having the answer. Finally, Mademoiselle de Fouet stepped forward. “About a year. She had her first fit a year ago. She refuses to see the surgeon.”

“I sent a footman for one already,” said the baron, his eyes still on his wife’s face.

“Because she’s asleep, she won’t know. She won’t answer his questions when she wakes.”

Manu wondered where the maid had gone.

A half hour later, with Maman still unconscious, the court surgeon arrived, dressed in satins and gold and attended by two proud assistants. The family was shooed out of the baronesse’s bedchamber and left to wait in the drawing room amongst the plethora of chairs.

Cédric and his wife Sandrine were summoned from their chambers, the grandchildren left in the care of nannies. Aurore sent a message to Jean-Louis and Henri in Paris to tell them the baronesse had fainted and they feared for her life. Manu was surprised to learn they had visited her in la Brosse during her earlier attack.

The baron started pacing as soon as the surgeon went in. He stopped at the far end of the room and sighed deeply. He turned on one heel and faced the rest of them. “We are trying to reconcile.”

Manu drew in a deep breath of pain, much like Jean-Louis’ smallest son after crashing down the stairs before he howled in pain. Manu didn’t howl. He didn’t even know why he wanted to howl.

“That’s why your mother came to the country. I wrote her, and she thought… Well, I don’t want to tell you what she thought. We argued, but mostly because she wanted to leave and I was frightened for her health.”

Manu’s head swam; he was barely listening. He had been a pawn in their game for so long, and they were changing the game. Neither had much use for him when he was a boy, but now they had each other. He was half relieved that they would leave him out of their quarrels, but half hurt because without him as their go-between, he didn’t know how he would fit.

A hand squeezed his. Cédric’s wife, Sandrine, smiled at him from where she leaned against Cédric. He didn’t think he had ever touched Sandrine except in perfunctory greeting, so he held onto her hand for only a moment. It probably would have frightened her if he’d gripped it. Though with a huge crowd of rowdy sons, she couldn’t be very timid in private.

The baron was still talking. “…and we promised to talk more when we both got to court.”

One of the surgeon’s assistants strode out of the bedchamber, looked down his nose at them in passing, and slipped out into the hallway.

Mademoiselle de Fouet crept out, and Manu jumped to his feet, surprising the others, who rose, too. He held out his hand, because she looked distraught.

“I’m not to say anything. The surgeon will talk to everyone at once.” She pulled away as Manu approached, and sat on a small chair in the back of the room. Manu sat near her, watching her from the corner of his eye. She dabbed at her eyes and trembled.

The only sounds were the others shifting in their chairs, and footsteps, and voices out in the hall.

Finally, the surgeon came out.

The baron jerked to his feet. “Is she awake? Will she recover?”

The surgeon motioned for everyone to sit. He looked around at all of them, his eyes narrowed. “The Baronesse de la Brosse has been poisoned.”

Manu shot to his feet. “Who? How?” He advanced on the surgeon. “Are you sure? Who would do that?”

The surgeon waved him away.

Dom tugged at Emmanuel’s sleeve. He yanked his hand free and remained where he was.

The surgeon said, “Generally, in cases like this, it is someone who stands to inherit. Or someone who wishes to be free. Or someone who hates their victim—anger, jealousy, revenge.”

The baron shrugged. “It’s not about inheritance. She has a stipend, and she had only a tiny dowry. I can afford to support her; she’s not a drain on the estate.”

“But do you wish to be free of her, Monsieur de la Brosse?” The surgeon’s sneer turned Manu’s stomach.

Had his father claimed he wanted reconciliation to get closer to his wife to kill her? Manu shuddered.

The surgeon’s assistant slipped back in, followed by two Mousquetaires in bright blue capes, who glanced around the room. Manu’s heart pounded and his blood rushed in his ears.

The surgeon said, “I have heard the baronesse has many enemies. She has been having these spells for a year, as Mademoiselle, uh…”

“De Fouet.” Manu’s voice sounded strange and loud.

He looked over at Catherine de Fouet, and she glanced up at him, agony in her face.

“Yes, Mademoiselle de Fouet. She has also been ill recently,
n’est-ce pas
?”

“Oui.” The baron sounded out of breath.

“So did she poison herself, to avoid suspicion, or was she a second victim? Possibly an unintended one?”

“I thought…” Mademoiselle de Fouet gulped. “It felt like the influenza. I nursed Madame de la Brosse and thought I caught it from her.”

“Did her maid get ill? Anyone else in the household?”

“Non, Monsieur.”

Manu glanced around. Where was Anne, his mother’s maid?

The door opened again. The maid stepped in and stopped short, face paling, gawking at the Mousquetaires.

She scurried to the family group and stood beside Mademoiselle de Fouet, back against the wall, head down. Where was Marie, the girl they had brought from the baron’s house?

“I have notified the Mousquetaires, as you see. There are so many rumors and suspicions of poison lately that I have been working with them far too much. I am sorry, but they will ask all of you some questions tonight.”

Another knock and a footman slipped in. He glanced around, apparently torn between fear and curiosity, then handed a package to the surgeon’s assistant and bowed his way out, hand over his nose.

Aurore slapped her handkerchief to her nose and coughed as the assistant passed her. Manu stepped back as the stench of asafetida rolled past him.

Dom glared at the surgeon. “Do you plan to revive my mother-in-law with that?”

The surgeon shrugged. “I have created a tincture to add to a poisoning victim’s wine. The
merde du diable
settles the stomach and aids the digestive problems caused by poison. The garlic draws the arsenic out. I would bleed the baronesse, but she is weak. Once she starts to recover, I will remove the poisonous blood.”

“Arsenic?” Manu heard himself croak. “It’s not a mistake?”

The surgeon looked him over, eyebrow raised. “She has all the symptoms. There’s always a possibility her attacker has given her more than one type of poison.”

Chapter Eight

“Hope, it is true, often gives relief,

Rocks for a while our tedious pain,

But what a poor advantage, Phillis,

When nothing remains, and all is gone!”

Catherine supposed that a few years before, when she had been dreaming of marriage, before her betrothal to Laurent, before his death, before the loss of her parents and her dowry, having a vicomte on one knee before her in a palace garden, declaiming poetry, would have made her swoon.

Who is Phillis?
she wondered instead, distracted from her worries about the baronesse and the pointed questions of the Mousquetaire the night before.

“You once showed some complaisance,

But less would have sufficed,

You should not take that trouble

To give me nothing but hope.”

Complaisance? She looked away to hide the fact he wasn’t making her blush. She contained a shiver and wished she had brought a shawl. The sky was overcast, and she wondered idly if it might rain.

“If I must wait eternally,

My passion, driven to extremes,

Will fly to death.

Your tender cares cannot prevent this,

Fair Phillis, aye, we’re in despair,

When we must hope forever.”

Ridicule
. He wanted to bed her. It wasn’t like he had an enduring interest in her. If she made love ever again, she would wait for the priest to verify she wasn’t going to be left alone and pregnant. She hadn’t fallen pregnant after dallying with her fiancé, but she could have.

She blushed when her thoughts turned to Monsieur Emmanuel. Then she shivered, remembering his shock when the surgeon announced his mother was suffering from poison: from grief-stricken to angry to shocked and back to angry. She hadn’t watched the others for their reactions; she had been worried about him.

The Vicomte d’Oronte waited on one knee, his puppy-eyed expression not masking his smug superiority.

“That was…” Catherine had to think for a moment. “That was quite…interesting.”

D’Oronte scowled.

“These matters, Monsieur, are always delicate, and everyone is fond of being praised for his wit.” She was pretty sure she knew the verse from somewhere. She stalled. “Did you write it yourself?”

“Of course! With some help from my friends, of course. I didn’t want the outpourings of my heart to become incoherent in their, ah, pouring out.”

If only you had been coherent. She stared at him blankly for a moment, trying to think of the poem. “Who is Phillis?” she asked.

“She’s the ideal of a shepherdess. The symbol of innocent, pastoral love.”

Catherine pouted to hide her laugh. Was this really how the nobility wooed their mistresses? “It’s not even a French name.”

“It’s from Greek.”

“Isn’t it an English conceit? Phillis the shepherdess?”

“I…” D’Oronte frowned. “I really don’t know.”

“For some reason, your poem makes me think of the Restoration of Charles II in England. Something about it makes me think of when I was younger.”

She realized this was the first actual conversation she had ever had with d’Oronte. Yet all she wanted was for him to go away so she could go back to the baronesse, who was awake but groggy. Some of her friends were with her, including Madame Philinte, who had appeared with her favorite grandson. He had promptly whisked Catherine off for a walk.

“When you were younger? Well, it must be because of the youthfulness of the verse. The sweet innocence of the shepherdess.”

What was d’Oronte talking about? Oh, yes, his sonnet. “Merci. But it also makes me think of…” Syphilis. She wouldn’t say it out loud. She didn’t think there was a polite way to refer to the Italian Disease.

“What is your reply?” D’Oronte got up and held out a hand for her to rise from the stone bench.

“My reply? Did you ask a question?”

He rolled his eyes and put his hat back on, shading his face in a menacing way. He placed her hand on his arm and began to stroll along the lane of hedges in the vast gardens. “Most of us at court like to be subtle, Mademoiselle.”

Implying she was too stupid to understand subtlety. It was her own fault; she had projected stupidity as part of her invisibility. She was useful to her patronesses’ schemes and plans. She carried notes but did not write them herself. She pretended to agree with her current patroness and do as she was told. Especially with the baronesse this meant
not
speaking her mind. And if it was stupidity, then she was stupid. And yet, here she was, fed and lodged and clothed, still at court. Her father’s friends had long since given up finding her a husband, as they had said they would when she was first orphaned.

“So you were asking subtly if I was going to make you wait forever, because that would kill you?”