When Sebastian walked out of the Musée des Monuments Français half an hour later, it was to find an elegant town carriage with a team of snorting, head-tossing blood bays drawn up outside the ancient convent’s door. The servants’ green-and-gold livery and the gleaming crest on the carriage’s panel both identified the owner.
“The Duchess will speak with you,” said the Chevalier de Teulet, stepping forward from where he stood waiting, his arms crossed at his chest. “Now.”
Sebastian eyed the two gendarmes flanking the Chevalier. “Again?”
The Chevalier simply grunted.
Sebastian assumed he was about to be strong-armed into the carriage and whisked off to the palace. Instead, the Chevalier yanked open the carriage door, and Sebastian saw the somber, black-clad Daughter of France herself sitting rigidly within, a meek-looking, colorless maid at her side.
“Madame,” said Sebastian, leaping up to take the seat opposite her, “how did you know I was here?”
He said it in French, but she answered him in her clipped English. “It is I who will ask the questions.” Sebastian glanced at the maid, and she followed his gaze. “Elise does not understand your language.”
“Convenient,” said Sebastian.
Her nostrils flared. “I know what you are looking for.”
“You do?”
“Let us not play games, monsieur. The Charlemagne Talisman: Dama Cappello had it, yes?”
Sebastian chose his words carefully. “She had the case. I honestly don’t know if she ever had the amulet itself.”
Marie-Thérèse pushed her breath out between her teeth in a hiss. “Where did she find it?”
“I have no idea.”
“The amulet belongs to us—to the descendants and successors of Charlemagne.”
Sebastian would have said it belonged to the people of France, but he kept the thought to himself.
“Where is it?” she said, her harsh, strident voice cracking.
“I suspect that’s a question that might be more profitably addressed to whoever killed her.” He paused, then added, “Unless of course her killers found only the empty case, in which circumstance one assumes that they, too, are now looking for the talisman.”
It was a subtle way of saying that he hadn’t eliminated her and her nasty ex-Jesuit henchman from his list of suspects.
But subtleties were lost on Marie-Thérèse. She said, “I will have it. It never should have been given to that putain Joséphine.”
Sebastian studied her tight, angry, haughty face. “I wonder what makes you think Madame Cappello ever had it.”
“It’s obvious.”
“It is? How?
Her features quivered with disdain. Rather than answer him, she simply turned her head away to stare out the carriage window at a cart of turnips trundling up the quai Malaquais. “Leave us. Now.”
Protocol required him to sketch a courtly bow—or at least as courtly a bow as one could execute within the confines of a carriage—and mumble humbly, Oui, madame. Instead, he simply thrust open the carriage door and hopped down.
He was turning toward where Tom was waiting with the phaeton when de Teulet put out a hand, stopping him.
“She will have it,” said the Chevalier.
Sebastian met the Frenchman’s blazing, fanatical eyes. “How did you know I was here?”
But de Teulet simply smiled and walked away.