“Thank you, Robert. Will you tell Marie we’re ready for supper?” He slipped the cloth from around the package.
Juliette took a step closer and peered down at the object he removed from the wrapping. “What is it?”
“It appears to be a fan.”
It was a cheap paper fan like the ones Nana Sarpelier had been selling at the café. Juliette took the fan and unfurled it. Painted on the coarse brownish-white surface was the exterior of a café on which a sign portraying a slyly smiling cat waved jauntily in the breeze.
“She wants us to come to the café.” Juliette’s eyes were shining with excitement as she turned away. “You’d better ring for Robert and tell him we won’t be home for supper. I’ll go change my gown and put on my wig.”
“We don’t have to go tonight.”
“But why shouldn’t we?” She looked back at him in surprise. “Why wait?”
He gazed at her in rueful astonishment. A few moments earlier she had been more fragile and vulnerable than he ever seen her, and now she was again ready to grapple with Titans. “No reason. You said you were hungry.”
“Don’t be foolish.” The words trailed behind her as she hurried away from him. “We can do both. That Raymond person at the café said he made an excellent lamb stew.”
“You mentioned two million livres.” Nana Sarpelier spread several fans on the table. “We went to a great deal of trouble to accommodate you. We want the money before I give you the information.”
“That’s absurd. I can’t give you the money until I sell the—” Juliette stopped and then continued. “The object you spoke to the queen about. That’s the purpose of all this. You’ll have to trust me to give you the money later.”
“Trust?”
“The queen trusts me. Why shouldn’t you?”
Nana Sarpelier looked gravely at Juliette for a moment before she began to gather up her fans.
“Tell us,” Jean Marc said.
Nana stood up and tossed the fans back on her tray.
“The name,” Juliette urged.
Nana hesitated, then picked up the tray. “Celeste deClement.” The next moment she was weaving her way through the tables of the café.
Juliette sank back in her chair, stunned.
Jean Marc lifted the goblet to his lips. “Your mother. Interesting.” He took another sip of wine. “And regrettable.”
“I didn’t think—” Juliette stopped and lifted her hand to her lips. “Why would she do it?”
“Steal the Wind Dancer? I’d think it would pose a temptation to almost anyone. She had the opportunity and seized it.”
“No, that’s not what I meant.” Juliette shook her head. “Of course she’d take it. But why would she stay here in Paris and become the mistress of that merchant if she had the Wind Dancer?”
“Because she knew she wouldn’t keep the Wind Dancer if anyone knew she’d stolen it. The assembly wanted it very badly at the time.”
“Then she had it all along at that house on the rue de Richelieu?”
“Presumably.”
“I…don’t think so. She said something about her papers…” Juliette’s brow knotted in thought as she tried to remember her mother’s exact words on the night of the massacre. “She said to get papers to leave Paris she’d had to bargain with Marat. She said, ‘That pig thinks I’ll send it to him but he’ll find I’m not so easily cowed—’” She leaned forward. “Don’t you see? Send. Not give. She was going to send him the price of the papers when she reached her destination, and what price would be big enough to appease Marat?”
“The Wind Dancer.” Jean Marc leaned forward. “Which evidently she never intended to send to him. When did she have the opportunity to take the Wind Dancer out of the country?”
Juliette tried to think. “The sisters told me they’d heard my mother had left Paris for a trip to her home in Andorra a few months after the queen was forced to leave Versailles.” Juliette smiled crookedly. “They were very gentle when they told me. They thought she’d abandoned me.”
“But she returned to Paris. Why?”
