“You’re sure she had some mysterious lover?” said Lucienne with an approving smirk. “It does explain some of her sneaking about, though I wouldn’t have expected it from her. You never know with the shy ones.”
“What sneaking about?” asked Mallory.
“She would be out of bed at all hours some nights,” Lucienne said. “She liked to go for midnight walks in the gardens. Would disappear when she was supposed to be finishing the laundry or helping to polish the floors. A few nights ago, she went into town to pick up some things from the couturier and didn’t come back until after dark. Said she lost track of time. I’m sure Yvette wouldhave fired her, except she didn’t want to throw the girl out on the street—and if it wasn’t so hard to keep help around here in the first place.”
“I’ll have to search her room. Maybe something there will indicate who gave her the ring.”
Mallory jotted a few notes about Julie’s comings and goings into her sketchbook, while Béatrice launched into a dramatic piano melody that made the sconces tremble on the walls.
The servants’ quarters were on the top floor, peeling off from a dimly lit corridor. Julie’s door was unlocked. The room was tidy, the furnishings simple. Linen drapes hung over a dormer window, where a sewing kit sat beside a wooden stool. A narrow bed was dressed with two faded quilts and a single pillow, where a few dark strands of Julie’s hair clung to the pillowcase. A small table held a nub of a candle. A wooden trunk sat at the foot of the bed.
Mallory fell upon the trunk first, digging through another maid uniform and apron. Wool stockings. A plain dress. A small tin full of hairpins. When the trunk held nothing of interest, Mallory moved to the nightstand, with its single drawer.
Inside were a couple of handkerchiefs, a green hair ribbon, nine copper lys—Mallory hesitated for only a moment before tucking them into her pocket, as Julie never had paid for her card reading. There was also a tiny book—Psalms of the Sevenprinted upon its cover.
As soon as Mallory picked up the book, something fluttered from between the pages. A pressed flower fell to the floor.
She picked it up, holding it toward the pale sunlight from the window, twirling the stem in her fingers.
Though the petals were faded, as delicate as ancient papyrus, she recognized the flower. Its unique blue and purple petals, curved in alternating rings. The pinwheel crown. Precisely like those in the greenhouse.
Armand’s greenhouse.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Claude quit the next morning. According to Yvette, he had a daughter in Comorre who was with child, and though he had served the Saphir family dutifully for near twenty years, he wasn’t about to risk the wrath of Le Bleu before he held his first grandchild in his arms.
Mallory didn’t blame him, though she didn’t really believe he was in danger from Le Bleu, whose victims fit a particular mold.
Armand didn’t try to stop him, either, and gave him use of his finest carriage to take him into town. Mallory watched from a ballroom window as Claude said his goodbyes to the remaining staff, and Armand pressed a parting gift into his hand. Coins? Jewelry?
Mallory’s insides stirred with envy, a reminder of why she was here. Not to solve a murder, but to get rid of a ghost. To get paid—more money than she’d ever dreamed she would see in her lifetime. To take her and her sister far away from Lysraux. To start a new life.
The carriage rolled away, and the staff returned to their work.
Mallory stayed at the window, watching the gardens, the skies, the birds swooping in and out of the house’s eaves. Armand had told her that Monsieur Le Bleu would laugh and whistle and stomp around the house when he had been cruel, ensuring that everyone knew what he had done. But he had been quiet since Julie had been found.
“I knew there was something wrong when I saw her cards.”
Mallory hadn’t seen her sister come in, but now Anaïs stood at the next window, staring blankly out at the same gardens, the same sky.
“I lied. I told her what she wanted to hear, even though… I knew that isn’t what the cards were saying.”
“You can’t read the cards, Anaïs. You don’t have petty magic.”
“Magic or not, they were trying to tell us something.” Her voice rose. “The Empty Coffin? The Untouched Feast? They were bad omens.”
“We don’t know that.”
Anaïs threw her arms up, exasperated. “For all the—! She drewVelos.”
“Who is the god of wisdom. It doesn’t always mean death.”
“I think it’s safe to say that this time, it did.”
Mallory sighed. “There’s nothing you could have said to change what happened. There was no way for either of us to know. Besides, she’d already gotten married, even before she asked for a reading. You couldn’t have prevented it.”
“Yes, but married who?” Anaïs asked. “We could have asked…”
