“I believe it’s considered customary to express curiosity about one’s daughter’s welfare in these circumstances. If someone had told you, would you have come running to my aid?”
Her mother bit her lower lip. “Why are you here? You know I can’t help you. I can barely help myself. Do you realize thatcanailleBerthold has told me to leave his house? He says the times are growing too dangerous for him to risk harboring a marquise.” Her violet eyes glittered with anger. “After I lowered myself to welcome that bourgeois pig to my bed, he abandons me when I most need him. Now I must return to Spain to that boring house in Andorra until I can think what next to do.”
She stiffened as her gaze fell on François standing on the steps behind Juliette. “Who is this man?”
“François Etchelet. He brought me here from the abbey.”
“Then let him help you.” Her mother whirled in a flurry of sea-green velvet, marched back into her chamber, and slammed the door.
“Are you satisfied?” Juliette asked François without expression.
“No.” Frustration and exasperation sharpened François’s voice. “You’re her responsibility and she has to care for you.” He climbed the staircase two steps at a time and yanked open the door to the bedchamber.
Celeste de Clement looked up with wide, startled eyes from the portmanteau she was packing.
“How dare you? I told you—”
“She needs your help,” François said curtly. “She’ll probably be arrested if she’s found in Paris in the next few days.”
“What about me?” Celeste asked shrilly. “Do you know how dangerous it is for me to be here withoutprotection? Do you realize how many members of the nobility have been arrested in the past week? And now those horrid beasts are murdering and killing and—”
“Raping,” Juliette finished from the doorway.
“Well, I’m sure you weren’t troubled,ma fille.” Her mother tossed a yellow taffeta petticoat into the bag. “After all, you’re not at all pretty.”
Pretty? What did appearances have to do with that horror at the abbey? Juliette gazed at her in disbelief as she remembered the child Henriette and the Reverend Mother. She turned to François. “May we go now?”
François stubbornly shook his head, his gaze on her mother. “She’s your daughter. Take her with you.”
“Impossible. No aristocrats are being given passes to leave the city. I had to make a bargain with that beast Marat to get one for myself. It’s not at all fair. That pig thinks I’ll send it, but he’ll find I’m not so easily cowed—” She broke off and turned back to her packing. “Juliette will have to shift for herself.”
When had she ever done anything else? Juliette walked out of the room and down the stairs.
François was behind her by the time she reached the bottom of the staircase. “She has no right to refuse you. The two of you are no longer my responsibility,” he said fiercely.
“Then leave us in the street and go about your business.” Juliette’s tone was equally fierce. Strange how raw she felt after seeing her mother. The interview had gone just as she expected, and she should really be numb to pain after the events of this night.
Marguerite smiled smugly as she held open the door for them. “I told you it would do you no good to see her. You were stupid to think—”
Etchelet’s breath exploded in a harsh rush. Juliette saw only a blur of movement. Yet Marguerite was suddenly jammed up against the wall with a dagger pressed to her long neck. “You said? I don’t believe I could have heard you correctly.”
Marguerite squealed, her eyes bulging as she gazed down at the knife.
Etchelet pressed the knife until a drop of blood ran down Marguerite’s neck. “You said, Citizeness?”
“Nothing,” she squeaked. “I said nothing.”
Juliette watched the wildness flicker in Etchelet’s taut face. For an instant she thought he would push the blade home, but he slowly lowered it and stepped back. A moment later he slammed the door behind them.
François sheathed his knife in his boot. “I lost my temper. I’ve been trying to keep from striking out since I arrived at that abbey and of a sudden I snapped. But I shouldn’t have frightened the servant when it was the mistress I wanted to skewer.”
“You didn’t like my mother?” Juliette asked. “How extraordinary. Most gentlemen do.”
“Do you have any friends or other relations in Paris?”
Juliette shook her head.
“There must be someone. What of Citizeness Vasaro?”
