Chapter 44
Thursday, 9 March
Hendon arrived at the Place Dauphine early the next morning, while they were still at breakfast. He tossed his hat onto a nearby chair and sat down heavily, his face grim.
“You’ll have something to eat?” said Hero, reaching out with one hand to stop Simon from pouring more sugar into Patrick’s porridge. Most families of their station left their children’s breakfast to the nursery staff, but Hero and Sebastian had long ago decided such families were missing out on far too much of their children’s lives.
The Earl shook his head. “Just tea, thank you.”
Sebastian poured him a cup. “I take it you’ve heard something?”
Hendon let out his breath in a long, heavy sigh. “A message arrived this morning from the King’s commander at Grenoble. The man’s a loyal monarchist, and he sent the entire Fifth Regiment to stop Bonaparte at the Laffrey Defile. It should have been easily accomplished—the men were drawn up in battle order, completely blocking the pass.”
“But?” said Hero when Hendon paused.
He took his cup, then simply held it a moment, his jaw working back and forth in that way he had when he was thoughtful—or troubled. “Napoléon ordered his own troops to trail their muskets. Then he dismounted and simply walked toward the King’s men on foot. He was wearing that familiar greatcoat of his—you know the gray one he always wore when he was campaigning? As he neared the King’s regiment, he threw open his coat to bare his breast and shouted, ‘Here is your Emperor! Kill him if you wish!’ ”
“My God,” said Sebastian. “You have to admire the man’s courage.”
“Courage? He’s mad! All it would have taken was one shot. One shot!”
“So what happened?” said Hero.
Hendon took a sip of his tea and grimaced. “The commanders ordered their men to fire. Instead, they threw down their guns, broke ranks, and surged forward shouting, ‘Vive l’Empereur!’ ”
“They went over to him?”
Hendon nodded. “The entire regiment.”
“And when he reached Grenoble?” said Sebastian.
“We don’t know yet. He hadn’t arrived there by the time the message was sent. The commander says he’s confident the gunners on the city walls will fire. But it’s still concerning.”
Hero’s gaze went to meet Sebastian’s. He raised one eyebrow in silent inquiry, and she pressed her lips together and nodded.
He said to Hendon, “You’re still leaving tomorrow?”
“I am, yes. Kitty Wellington is coming with me now, as well as Amanda.” A faint smile lightened the tension in his face. “Three carriages and three baggage wagons, plus a troop of cavalry detailed to protect the ambassador’s wife. We’ll be quite the little cavalcade.”
Sebastian hesitated a moment, then said, “If you’re willing to add a fourth carriage to your party, we’d like to send Claire and the children with you—and possibly Hero’s abigail and my tiger and valet, as well, unless they choose to stay.”
“Of course I’m willing,” said Hendon. Then he glanced at Hero. “You won’t be coming, too?”
She said, “You think I should?”
To Sebastian’s surprise, the Earl looked at him and said, “I take it you’re determined to stay and continue your search for Sophie’s killer?”
“I am, yes. But do you think Hero should go?”
Hendon considered it a moment, then gave a faint shake of his head. “No, I don’t see why she would need to. This mad adventure of Bonaparte’s can’t possibly last much longer. Ney’s army will stop him—there’s no doubt of that. Some of the rank and file might be defecting, but the marshals are all standing firm. If Napoléon was counting on them to come flocking back to his standard, he was sadly mistaken. For all we know, Ney could have defeated him already.”
“I hate not knowing what is happening right now,” said Hero. “Everything we hear is already days old.”
Hendon nodded. “Just imagine how much worse it would be without the semaphores.” He gave a grim smile. “I have no doubt we’ll hear soon enough that it’s all over, and historians will laugh at us for taking this nonsense so seriously. But I’m more than happy to take the boys with me if you’d like. If by some freak chance the unthinkable should happen and you decide later that you must leave, it will be easier to arrange without the children—not that I think it will come to that.”
He pushed to his feet. “And now I must get back to the Tuilleries. I’d like to leave by noon tomorrow, if their nursemaid can have the lads ready by then.”
“They’ll be ready,” said Sebastian, rising with him.
After the Earl had gone, Sebastian looked at Hero and said, “I’m beginning to think perhaps you should go with him, too.”
“No. I’m not leaving you here to deal with this alone.”
“Then perhaps we should all go.”
She reached out her hand to press her fingers to his lips. “No. You heard Hendon. This mad gamble of Napoléon’s will soon be over. But if we leave now, we’ll never find who killed Sophie. And I don’t want to live with the knowledge that I let a bad case of the nerves stop us from bringing her killer to justice.”
“And if the killer is Marie-Thérèse? Or even Hortense Bonaparte? How will they ever be brought to justice?”
Her face clouded in a way that told him this fear had already occurred to her, too. “Perhaps they can’t be brought before a court of law,” she said, “but they can be exposed for what they’ve done. And we will know. I’m not sure why that should feel so important, but it does.”
Painfully aware of Simon and Patrick’s looming departure, they devoted the day to the children: walking along the Seine in a fine mist; eating warm chocolate crepes purchased from a vendor who’d set up his stall in the shadow of Notre Dame; exploring the ancient winding streets of the Latin Quarter.
“I know it will only be for a few weeks,” said Hero as they wandered the paths of the Luxembourg Gardens. “So why does even thinking about it hurt so much?”
Sebastian was silent for a moment as they watched the boys scramble over a ruined wall that had once been part of a vanished Carthusian monastery. “We can always change our minds. Keep them here.”
“No,” she said with a faint shake of her head. “I can’t begin to explain it, and it almost embarrasses me to say this when everyone is so convinced Napoléon will be stopped, but . . . I have a bad feeling about this.”
He reached out to take her hand in his and hold it tight. Then his gaze met hers, and what she saw there mirrored all her own unspoken thoughts and fears. “I know. So do I.”
It was late in the afternoon, when Sebastian was off making final arrangements with Hendon, that Fanny Carpenter stopped by the Place Dauphine. She perched on the edge of the tapestry-covered settee in the salon, her reticule gripped so tightly in her lap that her fingers turned white. “I’m hearing rumors that Kitty Wellington is leaving Paris tomorrow, along with the Earl of Hendon and Lady Wilcox. Please tell me it’s all a hum.”
“No, it’s true,” said Hero, settling into the armchair opposite her. “But Hendon’s return to London has long been planned, and Amanda is going because she’s recently learned her daughter is in the family way.”
Fanny studied her quietly for a moment, her hazel eyes narrowed and shrewd. “Perhaps. But that doesn’t explain Kitty Wellington. It’s rather ominous when the British Ambassador’s wife turns tail and runs, wouldn’t you say?”
Hero paused while a maid brought in the tea tray, then said, “Has Colonel de Gautier heard something new?”
Fanny shook her head. “No. But then, Étienne is busy with the artillery; he doesn’t hear much of the palace chatter.” She hesitated, then added, “You knew Marie-Thérèse has left for Bordeaux?”
“I knew that was her intent, but I didn’t know she’d actually gone, no. Surely her decision to go ahead with her tour can only mean the palace is not overly concerned about Napoléon.”
“They say she is going to rally the troops.”
“Ah.” Privately, Hero suspected Marie-Thérèse’s presence might not have the effect the palace was hoping for. But she kept that to herself. “I hadn’t thought of that.”
Fanny took the cup Hero handed her, then simply sat holding it in her lap. “There are even rumors that the King has asked Kitty Wellington to take the crown jewels with her.”
Hero poured her own cup. “Oh, surely not. How can that be when the King is convinced Napoléon will be stopped before he gets much farther?” She set the teapot aside. “You’ve lived in Paris under Napoléon before. I would think his approach wouldn’t worry you as much as it might some.”
The Englishwoman met her gaze. “Étienne has now pledged his loyalty to the King.”
“As has everyone from Marshal Ney to Jourdan,” Hero said gently.
“Yes, I suppose,” said Fanny. She hesitated a moment, then said, “Do you know, when I first heard Napoléon had landed near Antibes, I laughed. I actually laughed. It seemed such madness for him to think he could conquer France with fewer than a thousand men. They say he slept on the beach that night and started marching toward Paris in the morning. It sounds like something from a play at the Comédie-Française, does it not? And yet here we are a week later, and the British Ambassador’s wife is fleeing Paris in terror.”
“I suspect she’ll feel very foolish in a month’s time,” said Hero.
Fanny gave her a trembling smile. “Perhaps you are right. For some reason I can’t quite explain, Marie-Thérèse’s departure threw me into something like a panic.”
Hero took a slow sip of her tea and kept her voice casual. “Have you ever heard Marie-Thérèse mention the Charlemagne Talisman?”
“The Charlemagne Talisman?” Fanny was silent for a moment, her brows drawn together as if in thought. “I know she’s been furious with the Bishop for giving it to Joséphine—she thinks it should by rights be hers. At one point she demanded Hortense return it, but Hortense claimed she didn’t know what had happened to it. Why do you ask?”
“The talisman’s empty case was found on the Pont Neuf the night Sophie was killed.”
Fanny’s eyes widened. “Good heavens. But . . . why?”
“We don’t know.”
Fanny set her cup in its saucer with a clatter. “You can’t think Marie-Thérèse had something to do with what happened to Sophie?”
“No, not at all,” Hero lied. “Devlin was simply wondering if anyone associated with the palace had recently expressed interest in the talisman.”
“You’re thinking Sophie’s murder is somehow connected to Napoléon’s return? Oh, surely not.”
“Can you think of any other reason someone might have had to kill her?”
“No, but . . . why would Sophie have had the talisman in the first place? I always assumed Hortense was lying when she claimed she didn’t have it.”
“It is curious,” said Hero, taking another sip of her tea. “You can’t explain it?”
“No. I wish I could.” Fanny fiddled with the handle of her own cup. “It’s so bizarre, these endless changes in government the French have endured these last twenty-six years. Whatever else one might say about the British monarchy, at least it’s stable.”
“Well, except for the Civil War and the Glorious Revolution. And the sticky bits in 1715 and 1745.”
Fanny’s eyes crinkled with amusement. “Yes, I suppose that with the exception of the Civil War, the events of those years must have seemed far more dire to those who lived through them than they do to us now in retrospect. Who was it said that the periods of greatest happiness are the missing pages in our history books?”
“I don’t know. But whoever it was, they knew what they were talking about.”
Fanny set aside her cup and reached out to clasp one of Hero’s hands in both of hers. “Thank you. You’ve made me feel better.”
“Have I? Yet if you are truly concerned, perhaps you could go on a visit to your family in England. Just for a while.”
A pinched look crept over the novelist’s face, making her look both older and frailer than she was. “But Étienne couldn’t come with me. And how could I leave without him? What if the worst were to happen so that I wouldn’t be allowed back in again as an Englishwoman?”
“It would be a risk,” said Hero. And she thought, All over France, people are facing these same torn loyalties, these same painful and heartbreaking decisions. And for what?
For what?
Devlin returned from seeing Hendon not long after the novelist’s departure. He poured himself a glass of brandy, then went to stand at the arched window, looking out at the square as the light faded from the day. “So many innocent lives being disrupted,” he said after a moment, echoing Hero’s own thoughts. “All over France. Again.”
Hero rattled the cups in their saucers as she stacked them back on the tray. “All because the Bourbons believe they have a divine right to rule France and because Napoléon was bored on his little island.”
He looked over at her. “Why do you think Fanny came?”
“She’s afraid, and she was hoping that thanks to Hendon we might know more than she does. It’s the inevitable result of the King’s decision to hide the truth about Napoléon’s landing for those two days, isn’t it? Now no one believes anything coming out of the palace. And who can blame them?”
“Not I.”
“No.”
She came up beside him, and they watched in silence as the lamplighter worked his way around the square. Unlike in London, where lamplighters had to use a ladder to reach the streetlamps, Parisian lamps were suspended by a cord that allowed them to be lowered and raised.
After a moment, she said, “Once Hendon leaves, how will we know what’s actually happening?”
“Vidocq?”
She looked over at him. “You trust him, a former brigand and galley slave?”
“About everything? No. But in this?” He reached out to draw her to him and hold her close. “Perhaps,” he said, pressing his cheek against her hair.
Then he added, “At least for now.”