“I know.” His fingers tangled in her curls. “Rest.”
“I want to see Catherine. I’d like to go to Vasaro and see Catherine. Do you suppose I could do that?”
“Yes, I’ll arrange it in the morning.”
“Catherine…François loves her.”
“Does he?”
“Yes, he does, Jean Marc. Every time he mentioned her name I could see…I knew something was wrong. I had to pull it out of him.”
“I’m surprised you succeeded.”
“I just kept at him.”
“Now that doesn’t surprise me at all.”
“The dauphin. I have to help Louis Charles. I promised her…”
“You have time. Go to Vasaro and rest first.”
“I’m so sleepy…How peculiar. I just woke up.” She forced her lids to open. “The fruit juice. Did you put something in it?”
“Yes.”
“As you did to François at Vasaro.”
“Only enough to give you a sound sleep.”
“With no dreams?”
He kissed her forehead. “No dreams.”
Jean Marc entered the salon an hour later. “I’m sorry to have kept you waiting. But I do thank you for coming.”
François didn’t bother to rise from his chair or look up from his goblet of wine. “I didn’t miss you. Robert kept me very well supplied from your excellent cellar.”
“Juliette insisted on going to the Place de la Révolution. You weren’t there?”
François took another drink of wine. “My business is to get them out of prison, not to watch them die when I fail. I decided to get drunk instead. Unfortunately I have a very good head. However, I’ll arrive there eventually.”
“Why the hell did you fail? You had money, the time—”
“And Monsieur working against me.”
“Monsieur?”
“The good Comte de Provence, the king’s brother. He originally organized our group two years ago. Everything went very well while we were freeing only the nobles. What would a king be without a court?” François lifted his glass to his lips. “It was only when it became urgent to free the royal family he suddenly discovered a lack of funds. It seems the good Monsieur wished to become king of France…He has to have spies in both our group and in the convention. Every time we were ready to move, he blocked us. Oh, not in any obvious way. He didn’t reveal my identity or sacrifice the rest of us.”
“And you don’t know who the spy is in your group?”
“I have an excellent idea. I’ve initiated a plan to make certain.”
“The count wants the boy to die too?”
“Of course, he’s in the way. Louis Charles is now king of France. But Iwillget him out of the Temple.”
“Iwillget him out of the Temple. But I’ll have to do it alone.”
