An Affair of Poisons(39)
“Fine.”
“Fine.”
We sit in silence as the hours pass.
A prince and a poisoner.
Trapped in the same room, but on opposite ends of the world.
11
MIRABELLE
I ball my fists in my skirt—mostly so I don’t fly across the millinery and throttle the bastard princeling—and watch the sun make its languid arc across the sky. Morning shifts to midday then evening. As eager as I am to leave this place, he’s right—it will be safer under the cover of night. So I drum my fingers against the floor and count the seconds until it’s dark and I can be free of him.
Never in my life have I known anyone so bullheaded. So willfully obstinate! Sitting over there with his devil-may-care attitude. I see you! I want to shout. You are just as desperate for approval as I am. Maybe even more so, since you’re too blind to recognize it.
I glance over and hope to catch him staring again—so I can make a barbed remark. But he’s drifted off to sleep. His long legs are stretched out in front of him and his hands are tucked behind his head, his hat propped partially over his eyes. He looks younger in sleep—the hard set of his jaw finally slack, his brows released from their perpetual scowl. A strand of dark hair has slipped from the queue at the nape of his neck and dangles down the side of his face. My fingers twitch, inexplicably wanting to tuck it behind his ear.
He’s impossible. And infuriating. But also desperate and lonely and aching.
Like me.
You don’t have to feel that way.
I want to say his words back to him. Not to rub salt in his wounds, but because they’re true. We’re more alike than either of us would care to admit. In another life, we might have been friends.
But not in this one.
He may be a bastard, but he’s still royal. He grew up at court, oblivious to the hunger and sickness and poverty I’ve spent my life fighting. There’s also the undeniable fact that I killed his father. I don’t know why I omitted that rather large detail when he asked about Versailles. Maybe I don’t want to accept my part in it; I may be less culpable than Mother and Marguerite, but I’m hardly blameless. Or maybe it’s more self-serving than that. He would never grant my freedom if he knew the truth.
Josse insists he wanted nothing to do with Louis XIV, but it’s a lie. Deep down, he loved the man. Desperately.
Which is why we’ll go our separate ways. I have an agenda to keep, and it doesn’t include hiding away like a coward while the Shadow Society ravages the city. Not if I can help the people and quiet the nagging finger of guilt that’s prodding me in the belly. I push up to my knees and peer between the boards nailed across the window, waiting until the night is half gone and the gambling dens on either side are silent. Then I gather up my skirts and tiptoe across the millinery. At the door, I steal one more glance at Josse—the moonlight dancing across the sharp planes of his handsome, but entirely irksome, face—and slip into the chilly night.
After a quick scan of the street, I head south toward the river. More specifically, toward the Louvre.
I may not be able to change what I’ve done, but I can attempt to redeem myself.
I creep toward the city center, past the Palais Royal, which is no doubt overrun with Shadow Society loyalists, and I’m about to turn on to the rue Saint-Honoré—the street bordering the northern wall of the Louvre—when a hand snakes out of a shadowed alcove and catches me by the throat. A moment later, fingers slap across my lips, muffling my scream.
“You filthy little liar!”
I had expected to find Fernand or Marguerite or another high-ranking member of the Shadow Society. But Josse’s gray-green eyes blaze down at me. His fingertips press bruises into the skin above my collar bone.
“Unbelievable,” he seethes.
“Y-you!” I stammer when his hand slides away from my lips. “You were asleep.”
“No. I was testing you. And you failed. Running straight back to your mother, despite your pretty promises. I should have let Desgrez kill you.”
I wrench my arm back, but his hold tightens. “I’m not running back to my mother.”
Josse narrows his eyes. “You just happened to fancy a stroll past her stronghold?”
“I happen to have a plan of my own.” I rear back again, and this time I stumble free.
“And what plan is that?”
I wrap my arms around my chest, rubbing his angry red fingerprints from my skin. “I don’t see how it’s any of your business, but I plan to continue the work of the Shadow Society—our true work,” I add when he scoffs. “Murdering the king and seizing the city was never our aim. Our concern has always been for the common people: brewing curatives and hunger tonics and love potions.”
“I still fail to see how that requires returning to the Louvre. You can’t honestly hope to recruit La Voisin’s followers to your cause.”
“No, but I can steal back my alchemy supplies.”
He’s silent for a moment. His heavy breath billows between us in the cold. “While your intentions are noble … if you’re telling the truth,” he adds with a deliberate pause, “I can’t allow you to put yourself in such a precarious position.”
“Why not?” I cut him off. “The common folk aren’t worth the risk?”