Page 35 of A Secret Correspondence (Hearts of Harewood #4)

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Marguerite’s head throbbed as she sat on a hard chair in the center of her parlor. The stiff burlap bag over her head smelled of stale sweat. Her hands were tied behind her back, and her ankles fastened to the chair legs. She did not understand what this person expected from her.

“I do not have the diamonds,” she said to him again, her voice muffled through the bag. It did not matter what she told the man, he would not believe her.

“You lie,” he hissed. Strong hands gripped her shoulder, pushing it back into the chair. Wooden slats dug into her arms, bent at the wrong angle behind her back. “I have proof.”

“How?” She suppressed her cries of pain, not wanting to give him further satisfaction.

A creaky floorboard near the front of the shop made Marguerite’s breath catch. Did this man have help coming?

Or was it help for Marguerite?

The Frenchman smashed into her knee in his haste to round her chair. He took hold of her upper arm firmly and did not release it .

Footsteps pounded from the shop into the parlor, coming to an immediate halt.

“Stop,” the Frenchman said, his gravelly voice driving unpleasant chills down Marguerite’s spine.

He yanked the bag from her head, pulling strands of hair with it.

Candles were lit in the parlor, but the room was dim, and she was disoriented.

It took a moment for Marguerite to gather her wits, but the moment her gaze cleared, she connected with Samuel’s clear blue eyes.

The familiar lines of his face, the uncharacteristically disheveled hair.

His presence was an instant boon. Elation filled her, growing as she recognized Oliver and Jacob bookending him.

Her friends had arrived. They wouldn’t allow anything to happen to her.

Only, a strange energy permeated the room.

The Frenchman’s fingers continued to dig into her arm, and Samuel wasn’t moving.

He stood frozen in the doorway between the parlor and the shop, his arms stiff as though he had been dipped in candle wax.

That was when Marguerite recognized the pure fear radiating in his eyes.

Then she felt the cold steel against her throat.

“Do not move,” the man said.

But this time, his voice was different. No longer coated with gravel, thick and hoarse. It was smooth, familiar. The warm tone of someone she knew well…had known for most of her life.

Marguerite’s heart spiked in a different way, pain and shock curling around each other. “Paul?”

He let out a strained sound. “I tried to keep it from you, ma chére . I did not want you to be hurt.”

Her throbbing temple said otherwise. She recoiled from him, but it only served to press her skin against the knife. Sharp pain stung her neck, and a warm drop of blood welled and dripped down her skin .

“If you hurt her,” Samuel growled, his voice low and dangerous, “you will regret stepping foot in this town.”

“This will all end the moment Marie-Louise tells me where the diamonds are.”

She noticed the confusion crossing her friends’ faces and closed her eyes. There would be no keeping her past from them now.

“Ah, she has not told you?” The note of glee in Paul’s voice was alarming. “Are any of you aware that you are in the presence of the daughter of the great Comte de Agnon?”

Surprise lit Samuel’s face briefly before he shuttered the expression away. “I know you were familiar with the family.” His voice was remarkably calm. “So familiar, you still carry on a friendship with their daughter.”

“They saved my life, and I owed them a debt of gratitude. The least I could do was see to it their daughter made it safely across the channel and found a good occupation.”

“While you helped yourself to her mother’s trunk?” Oliver asked. “Hoping to find her jewels, I imagine?”

“It would have made things easier, yes. But they were not packed away with her other things.” Paul’s hand slackened on Marguerite’s shoulder, but the knife did not move.

“I kept the trunk, though. One never knows when those sorts of things would become useful. Marie-Louise had no need for fine things as a modiste’s apprentice.

And saving the trunk allowed me to use it now. ”

Samuel scoffed. “You must accept defeat. It has been twenty years since Marguerite was separated from her mother. The diamonds could be anywhere.”

“But they are not.” The cold, confident way Paul spoke sent a chill running over Marguerite’s skin. “Tell me. How does a penniless apprentice find the funds to purchase a shop of her own?”

Dread flushed through Marguerite’s body as silence washed through the room.

The candles flickered on the hearth and the table near the window as though they, too, felt the breadth of the revelation now making its way through each person’s mind.

Paul was asking the question she had hoped no one would ever consider.

He was leading them down a line of reasoning she had gone to great lengths to avoid.

“How does she find the finances to purchase the items necessary to fill the shop?” he continued.

“From her husband, I assume,” Oliver said. Bless the man for thinking the best of her. But now she knew what was coming, and the total loss of her friendships would undoubtedly be the result. Her body deflated, hope leaving and darkness edging in.

Paul barked a condescending laugh. “Marie-Louise must not consider any of you her true friends, for she has not told you much of anything, it seems. She has never married. Madame Marguerite Perreau was a lie to protect herself from those who would not patronize her shop were she a single woman.” He gave this speech with a modicum of pride, as though he was satisfied to be the one to break their good opinion of her.

“Before that, her English name was Mary Perry. And before that, Marie-Louise Perrault in France. Our little mouse has been dishonest for a long time.”

“With good reason, it seems,” Samuel countered, “if there are people who would use her ill merely from knowing who her parents were.”

“I have always cared for Marie-Louise,” Paul snapped.

“I did not choose to become destitute. I had hoped to spare her from the knowledge that it was I who desired her jewels. Indeed, I still care greatly for her, but I have nothing left. Those boys never paid me enough to tutor them, and you know it, Marie-Louise. I had no other choice. Yet you all had to meddle and ruin everything.”

“Why did you wait so long?” Marguerite asked, her voice cutting through the room. “If you’ve had the trunk in your possession all these years, why now?”

“I did not know you had the jewels until you bought this shop.” He blew out a breath.

“Look at this place. This house. You will be taken care of, Marie-Louise. It is I who have run out of money. It is I who can no longer afford to pay my housekeeper. There must be jewels in your possession, or you would have had no way to purchase your business to begin with.”

She cringed as the truth of his words crashed down around them all. Her friends looked to her, but she could not lift her gaze to meet theirs. She should have told them earlier, should have admitted to the three items she had kept hidden within the straw of her mattress.

“The fleur-de-lis diamonds are in France,” she bit out.

“Where?” he rasped. “What do you have here? You had something to buy this place.”

“Nothing,” she promised. “Not anymore. I used my aunt’s ring, and it is gone now.

” That, at least, was the truth. Paul had been too wise, too cunning to discover her secret.

She had thought that by living in a town so far from everyone she knew, it would never be discovered that she had bought the building she lived in, that she was not merely a tenant who paid a quarterly rent.

It was not a typical arrangement. Paul must have grown desperate.

“Where are the rest of your aunt’s jewels?” he asked. “I searched her trunk when we reached England and found nothing.”

She did not want to reveal she had later found them sewn into the lining of her aunt’s gowns the way her mother had sewn them into her own. That was not a detail that would serve Marguerite well if she had any hope of retrieving her mother’s dresses intact.

The knife dug further into her throat. “ I found it first and hid it,” she lied. “I thought the ring was pretty and wanted to keep it with me.”

“That cannot be all,” Paul shouted.

Marguerite kept her gaze on the floor, ashamed of her deceit.

The toe of Samuel’s boot caught her eye. It was not so near a moment ago. Had he moved closer? She could not tell. She glanced at Jacob’s and Oliver’s boots as well, noticing none of them were near the door. How long had each of them been slowly inching forward?

Paul continued to yell. “Tell me now! Where did your mother?—”

Silence filled the room. His abrupt halt was jarring.

“Your mother,” Paul said, his voice thoughtful, as though he had fallen deep into contemplation.

“She had them when we escaped, did she not? When she was shot in the street, she had the jewelry. What did you do? Nothing. You could not, for your aunt and cousin had both been killed by the mob. Your father had already been executed.”

Each new reminder was a slash of memory in her head, a bolt of pain in her heart.

“It was only you and I left, and I took you with me,” Paul said in thought. “We hid in the mud until it was safe to journey to the water. The diamonds were with your mother. Are they still?”

Marguerite’s heart hammered, beating rapidly against her chest. “Of course not. Whoever buried her likely took them.”

“If that was the case, you would have mentioned so long ago,” he said easily, aware he had cornered her now. “They were hidden on her person so she could travel freely without garnering attention. I know it was the plan, because I was there when the plans were being made. Only where?”