Wild Highland Magic (The Celtic Legends Series Book 3)(69)

Marie should have been here by now. The last note Genevieve had sent her was specific: Tonight was the night they were to meet in this courtyard to complete the plans they had so painstakingly formed over the last three weeks. She and Marie had been passing notes back and forth through the same system without fail for too long for there to be a sudden mix-up.

Come, Marie. Come.

Somewhere in Paris church bells rang. Above her, birds startled with an anxious fluttering of wings. A stream of silt filtered down from the higher scaffolding, dusting her shoulder. As the church bells faded, she saw a figure separate from one of the buildings.

Genevieve sucked in a breath and pressed back against the masonry. If one of the guards saw her, she’d be right back where she started, and who knew when she’d get a chance like this again. But as she watched the figure enter the courtyard, she realized this was no guard. It was a woman, a young woman by the quick pace of her walk, an anxious woman by the way her head pivoted back and forth.

Genevieve intercepted her near a pile of bricks. “Marie?”

The young woman stopped short and pulled back the edge of her scarf, revealing a pale, drawn face. “Genevieve?”

“Oui. Come into the shadows.”

She had never seen Marie before today. With relief, she noticed that they were of about the same height. Height would have been the most difficult to disguise.

As she approached, Marie loosened her head rail and pulled the scarf off her hair. “Thank God you are here. I feared you would leave. The housekeeper on my floor would not fall asleep. I had to check three doors before I found one unlocked.”

Refined speech. Well, Genevieve could mimic that well enough. “You had nothing to fear,” she said. “I would have stayed until dawn.”

The young woman squinted at her. “I have never seen you before.”

“Nor I you.” She didn't bother to explain that she was housed in a separate building, isolated from women like Marie. Marie was a bijou, a jewel of the Salpêtrière, an orphaned daughter of the petty nobility, pampered and educated and protected.

“You write with such a fine hand,” Marie murmured, glancing at Genevieve's common russet skirts. “I thought you might be one of the noblewomen housed in another building.”

Genevieve felt the muscles of her neck tighten. In another time, in a better world, she might have been worthy of being called a bijou. But that was long ago and best forgotten. She gestured to Marie's skirts. “Is that what you planned to wear tomorrow?”

“Yes.” Marie parted her cloak to show a dark blue traveling dress. “I've packed a small case and left it by my bed. In it, you'll find several other dresses and a few gold pieces. This is all I can give you for what you are doing for me.”

Such foolish, innocent generosity. “You should have kept the money. You'll need it more than I—”

“No, that isn’t true.” Marie twisted her scarf in her hands. “You do know what you're doing, don't you? I couldn't live with myself—no matter how happy I'd be to escape this place—if I misled you.”

“I'm the one who suggested this plan.”

“But I’m going to be sent away—you’re going to be sent away,” Marie corrected. “King Louis XIV himself has dowered me. He has paid my passage to some horrible place called Quebec and he intends to marry me off to some coarse, half-savage settler—”

“I know you're a king's girl.” Every year since she’d arrived in the Salpêtrière, dozens of girls had been given a dowry by the king and sent off to the Caribbean islands or to the northern settlements of New France, to marry and settle in the colonies. “I chose you because you're being sent away from here.”

“Do you know anything about Quebec?”

Genevieve took the mangled scarf out of the other girl’s hands to stop her from crumpling it. “I know enough.”

“The forests are filled with red-skinned savages. The winters are long and frigid, and there's so much snow that it tops the rooftops.” Bereft of the scarf, Marie's smooth white hands knotted and twisted and pulled at each other. “And the voyage—over the sea—halfway across the world, in storms and sickness. Why are you doing this? Why would you take my place and go to that dreadful colony and leave all this behind?”

Genevieve glared at the long buildings of the Salpêtrière and thought, I'd rather sell my soul to Lucifer than spend another hour here.

But Marie wouldn't understand that. She and Marie both lived in this “charity house,” but they lived in entirely different worlds. Marie lived in the Salpêtrière of King Louis XIV, the charity house that succored aging servants with no pensions, old married couples of good birth, and the younger daughters of impoverished petty nobility, a charity house staffed with religious women and headed by a benign Mother Superior. Genevieve lived in a place ruled by brutal guards, a place peopled by orphans and waifs and beggars taken forcefully off the streets of Paris. Since the day she herself had been captured, three years ago, she'd found no charity in this place.

“I'm surprised Mother Superior didn't recommend you to the king himself,” Marie continued into the silence. “I've been told she's having a difficult time finding enough girls of modest birth to fill the king's ship.”