The Glamourist (The Vine Witch #2)(58)
Alexandre removed his pince-nez to give them a wipe with a handkerchief. “But how did Yvette come to live with you? Did her mother not want her? Perhaps Tulane made her give up the child?”
“Of course she wanted the girl. She adored that child. They both did.” Isadora looked away, and her brow tightened in thought. “But wherever they were going, something happened at the last minute. They could no longer take the child with them. And yet Cleo was terrified of her husband finding Yvette and taking her away. They were both distraught when they came to me. Begged me to take her. To raise her. To keep her safe. They gave me a little money and made me promise I’d save the book for when the girl was old enough to understand.”
“I’m sorry, madame, but were there no relatives they could take her to?”
“None that she talked about. And anyway, he would have tracked the child down if there had. I may not look to you like the ideal mother,” she said, pointing her finger against the table in fierce self-defense, “but he never found the girl here in all those years.”
As bad as things might have been for Yvette under this woman’s wing, an overpopulated city orphanage would have proved worse. Elena sympathized with the mother’s odd choice a little better now. “But Cleo never told you what the book was for? Or what the symbols meant?”
“Non, only that the girl would know what to do with the book once it was in her hands,” she said with a roll of her eyes. “As if that girl ever had any instinct for magic.”
“But how could she know? Yvette never had a mentor, never learned what kind of witch she was meant to be.”
“No, she was taught more important lessons, like how to survive in a world that didn’t know what to do with her.” Isadora shifted in her seat, twisting her torso to face Elena. “Maybe it’s time you tell me why you’re all so interested in Yvette and this book. Why, exactly, are you helping her?”
It was impossible to explain the magic whirlwind she’d been sucked into when Yvette stole the wish. But aside from that, the truth was Elena wanted to help her.
“I owe it to her,” Elena said. “She’s a brave young woman who just needs a little karmic nudge in the right direction so she can find the wings to fly on her own.”
They exchanged a brief look, each assessing the motives of the other before Isadora replied. “I think Cleo knew she would never see Yvette again. I always thought the little book was like a diary, something she wrote about her life, her family maybe. That’s where they were headed, I believe. Home. But for obvious reasons maybe she couldn’t return with an illegitimate child.”
But there had to be more to the story than that. A man had kidnapped Yvette off the street to get his hands on the book, having twice sent thugs to steal it. And Yvette had gone to prison for murdering a man who tried to take the treasure from her. She supposed a mother’s shame could explain the concealment, but then why bother to record the story for Yvette in the first place?
“Could Cleo have shared something important, something incriminating about the husband?” Elena paused. “Who did you say she was married to?”
Alexandre cleared his throat. “If I’m not mistaken, it was Ferdinand Marchand, the Comté-du-Lac du Nord.”
“The comté? But I was introduced to him the other day by my fiancé’s mother.”
“He’s here? In the city?” The panic in Isadora’s voice was unmistakable.
Elena’s instinct recognized the preposterous coincidence of having recently met the very man they discussed. “Is it possible he could still be looking for Yvette after all this time?”
Alexandre wasn’t buying it. “He’s a well-respected member of the noblesse. What could Cleo have possibly written in the book that could affect a man like him so many years later?”
“I don’t know, but I think we can safely assume Yvette is in immediate and grave danger if he’s found her. Maybe even more so because of her ignorance of magic.”
Henri let out a helpless breath, summing up exactly how they all felt.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Whenever Yvette had found the courage as a child to ask Tante about her mother, it was always the same answer—she was a dancer, like all the other women who came and went at the cabaret. But none of the women there ever said they knew her. Now she knew why, if that powder-sniffing stuffed shirt was to be believed. It gave her a shiver, like gold dust shimmering in her veins, to think her mother might have been the extraordinary Cleo Marchand, even if the notion was absurd.
Despite the iron burning her arms, the cold and dark seeped under her skin. She’d survived more than a month in a filthy prison with nothing but straw and a thin wool blanket to keep her warm, but she’d had the daytime sun, meager food, and the company of smart women to sustain her. Though she’d tried to fight the impulse at first, thoughts of dying in the Maze of the Dead had a morbid beauty to it she decided, until she realized her body wouldn’t be found this deep in the catacombs for a year or ten or never.
Yvette rolled over onto her back, groaning from the effort of expending so much energy. He’d soon figure out she lied about the book. Then what? Come back and torture her some more? She wouldn’t last through another round of kicks in the dark. But if she did give him the book, he’d have no need of her anymore, and then what? How would he kill her? Quick with a knife? A killing spell might attract too much attention, even in a place that might as well serve as the threshold to hell’s basement. But what if he decided to leave her there on the floor without food or water in complete darkness, once the torch went out? She would actually, truly die, slowly and with a whimper.