Chapter 43
Not good, this,” said Eugène-François Vidocq, shaking his head. They were in the salon of the house on the Place Dauphine, Sebastian standing beside the fire while the policeman lolled in a chair near the front window and sipped a glass of Sebastian’s port. “Why would someone want to steal one of your children?”
“You tell me,” said Sebastian, his voice rough with a powerful combination of fear and rage. Patrick wasn’t technically his own child, of course. But the boy looked enough like Sebastian that people tended to assume he was, and his affection for the child was obvious. “This is your city, not mine.”
Vidocq shook his head again. “You’ve obviously made some dangerous enemies, monsieur.”
“So why not come after me directly, the way they did at Montmartre? Why target my wife and children?”
“Could be revenge,” mused Vidocq. “Someone nasty enough to want to take one of your children and watch you suffer rather than simply kill you outright. Or the idea could have been to seize your son in order to exchange him for something.”
Sebastian looked over at him. “Something such as the Charlemagne Talisman, you mean?”
Vidocq paused with his glass halfway to his lips and stared at Sebastian with one eyebrow raised. “The what?”
“The Charlemagne Talisman. It’s what was in the jeweled red leather case you recovered from the rue de Rivoli pawnshop. And now it’s missing.” He gave the head of the Sûreté nationale a brief description of the amulet and its history.
“You think that’s what whoever came after your family wants?” Vidocq pursed his lips, opened his eyes wide, and rocked his head back and forth. “I suppose it’s possible.”
“Except that I don’t have it.”
“Perhaps someone thinks that with enough motivation you could find it.”
“As if catching my mother’s murderer weren’t motivation enough?”
“Ah, but they don’t know she’s your mother, do they?”
Sebastian grunted and went to pour himself a brandy. “Still no luck finding the fiacre driver from that night?” he asked, glancing back at Vidocq.
The policeman’s broad, scarred face took on a pained expression. “Non. And I don’t understand why something that should be so simple is proving to be so difficult. I would have said it’s impossible that we should not have found him by now. How does one explain it?” He took a slurping sip of his port. “I’ve no idea.”
“And the fille publique?”
The ex-gallerian let out a heavy sigh. “Alas, she too remains elusive. You haven’t by chance seen her hanging around again?”
“No.” Sebastian was always looking, everywhere he went. But in a city the size of Paris, the odds of his finding her were slim.
Vidocq drained his glass and set it aside. “I hear Napoléon marches onward with not a shot being fired. They say the soldiers sent to stop him are simply tearing off their white cockades and joining him.”
“Where did you hear that?”
Vidocq laughed. “Not from the palace.”
“Do you think he’ll reach Paris?”
Vidocq met his gaze. “You want the truth?”
“Yes.”
The policeman brought up a hand to pluck thoughtfully at one earlobe with his thumb and forefinger. “I think the people of France are torn. They accepted the return of the King as the price of peace. They were tired of conscription, tired of losing their sons and brothers, husbands and fathers, to war. But the last ten or eleven months have reminded many of why they hated the Bourbons in the first place. They resent the favors being heaped upon the returned émigrés and the scornful disrespect shown by Marie-Thérèse and her women toward the wives of French heroes such as Jourdan and Ney. They miss the tricolor and the old days of French gloire. Nostalgia is a powerful drug—as is wounded pride. Will Napoléon prevail in the end? Who knows? But I think the Bourbons underestimate the attraction of everything he represents.” He pushed to his feet with a grunt. “There. You asked for my honest opinion, and I have given it.”
Sebastian met the Frenchman’s hard gaze. “Thank you.”
Vidocq nodded and turned toward the door. “Good day to you, monsieur. I’d say I wish you luck, but I think we’re all going to need it now.”
After Vidocq had gone, Sebastian went to the dining room, where Hero sat at the table quietly cleaning the brass-mounted muff pistol her father had once given her. Later, he knew, she would tuck it into her reticule to carry it with her, loaded. She would not be taken by surprise again.
“Vidocq’s thoughts on Napoléon are interesting,” she said without looking up from her task.
Sebastian let his gaze drift over the strong features of her face—the square jaw, the aquiline nose that was so much like Jarvis’s, the fierce gray eyes that glowed with an uncanny intelligence. He was still shaking from what had happened today, terrified by how close they had come to losing Patrick, and furious with himself for not being there to help save him.
“I’m wondering if we’re making a mistake,” he said, “if perhaps you and the children should go with Hendon when he leaves this Friday.”
She looked up then. “Is that what you want?”
“No. But I’m worried about you.”
“And if the children and I leave, would you still stay?”
He met her gaze and held it. “You know I must.”
She nodded. She knew this about him—knew that he would never rest until he found his mother’s killer. She said, “I don’t like the idea of running away simply because someone attacked us. And I don’t think . . .” She paused as if searching for a way to put her thoughts into words. “I don’t think that under the circumstances it would be good for you to stay here alone.”
“What does that mean?”
She met his gaze. “You know.”
He reached out to caress her cheek. “You’re not afraid?”
“Of Napoléon? No.”
“And the mood on the streets?”
“That might be more problematic. But I’m not going to let some humpbacked poodle clipper and overgrown bricklayer chase me away. And I’m not leaving you here to do this by yourself.”
“We could send the boys with Claire.”
He saw her lips part, her brows contract in a quick frown. She had never been one of those aristocratic women who relegated all care of her children to nursemaids. “I honestly don’t know if I could do that. But . . .” She sucked in a deep breath, let it out slowly. “Let me think about it.”
He nodded, then turned as the sound of childish laughter on the stairs heralded the arrival of Claire and the boys. And it came to him, as he watched Hero set aside the small flintlock to step forward and sweep both children up into her arms, that she might not be afraid, but he was.
He was terrified of losing all three of them.