The Fidelity Files (Jennifer Hunter #1)(123)

Jamie mimed a tip of his hat as we walked by. "Monsieur," he saluted politely.

"As you can see," I said, laughing and motioning to the small stone room around us, "compared to the other prisoners' cells that we saw before, this was like a room at the Plaza."

The cell was about half the size of a typical motel room, with a small bed in the corner, low to the ground, and a modest wooden table sitting next to it. Behind a short, fabric-covered folding screen stood another wax figure of a guard, watching the room intently, as if at any minute the queen might pull out some kung fu fighting move and attempt to escape.

"What's his problem?" Jamie motioned toward the guard.

I looked up. "He's making sure she doesn't flee. She and the king tried it once before, you know."

Jamie eyed the statue incredulously. "No way. I don't buy that for a second. He's not waiting for her to try to escape. He's waiting for her to take her clothes off so he can get a glimpse at the queen's boobies."

I let out a stunned gasp. "He is not!"

Jamie nodded regretfully. "I'll bet this was the most coveted shift. All the guards would sit around and play cards or dice just to try to win the position of the queen's 'guard.' And the night shift? Forget about it! That was reserved for the warden himself."

The truth of the matter was, it wasn't just Marie Antoinette who fascinated me. All the kings and queens of the old French monarchy did. Their lives intrigued me. All the sex, the scandal, the drama. It amazed me how you can look back at the interwoven story lines of their relationships and clearly see that nothing has really changed since then. If you compare a basic plot line of an episode of The O.C. with a real-life story of a French aristocrat, his family, and all of his personal "dealings," you'd see it's basically the same story. People's obsession with drama and gossip is nothing new.

Back then people also gossiped about the rich and famous. Adulterous sex could also captivate an audience. And dishonesty was practically a spectator sport. The only difference between then and now is that these days the adulterers make more of an effort to keep their mistresses well hidden. Or so they'd like to think.

I watched Jamie as he examined some of the old relics of the French Revolution protected behind thick sheets of unbreakable glass casing, and I suddenly heard myself saying, "You know, the king, Louis XVI, had a mistress."

He turned his attention to me and my random comment, which seemed to come out of nowhere, and I quickly tried to cover it up with more arbitrary facts. "Actually, most of the kings had mistresses. At least one. Sometimes more than one. Sometimes like seven... one for every day of the week." I tried to force a chuckle.

I was rambling. There was no doubt about that. But Jamie simply nodded responsively, without any signs of remorse or discomfort. As if he were attentively listening to an interesting lecture but felt no connection with the subject matter whatsoever.

His silence pressured me to keep talking. "In fact," I pressed on shamefully, "I wouldn't be surprised if Marie Antoinette kept a little lover on the side herself. You know, like a midnight snack. A box of Pop-Tarts, perhaps. I mean, nobody was faithful back then. It was practically out of style."

I was hoping that something would strike a chord, touch a nerve, evoke some type of reaction. I just had to keep searching until I found the right word, the right way to say it.

But all he did was laugh politely and say, "Well, you know how it was back then. Marriage was just a political arrangement. Particularly for kings and queens. They didn't marry for love."

I watched him intently as he spoke, searching for signs of hidden meaning. Hidden agendas. Subliminal messages trying to convert me to adulterer worship and trust in his evil cheating ways. But there were none. He simply knew his political history. And quite well, for that matter.

"You married the person who made the most sense," he continued. "Socially, economically, and politically. And then you fell in love with the person who made you the most happy."

I almost felt tears well up in my eyes right then. I wanted to run over to him, wrap myself in his arms, and tell him that I wanted to be the one who made him most happy. That the rest of it didn't matter. We could run away. Start over. Forget everything that had happened before this moment. But I could feel my feet getting heavy, gluing me to the spot I was in.

And against all my better judgment as an experienced fidelity inspector, trained to go nowhere near the topic of unfaithfulness while on an assignment, I couldn't stop myself from asking, "Do you think that still happens today?"

He walked over to me and rested his hand on the wooden railing that divided the tourists from the replica of the queen's cell. "You mean politically arranged marriages?" he asked incredulously, as if to say, "Have you been living under a rock or were you just hit over the head with one?"

"That," I said cautiously, "and mistresses." I pronounced the word carefully and watched for a reaction. None came. So I continued, "Do you think people still have them? Stashed away in places."

He laughed. "Like in Swiss bank accounts?"

I tried to laugh back, but I felt myself getting extremely irritated. Why was he joking about this? Why wasn't he taking my questions seriously? He damn well should! He'd been keeping me stashed away this entire time and I didn't see how that was so f*cking funny.