Page 25 of Souvenir Heart

There was a rattling of the door. Whoever had been knocking was now testing whether it was locked.

He’d taken care to lock it, but did they have a key?

His eyes were drawn back to the portrait. The thought of leaving it in this vandalized and abandoned apartment felt like leaving gemstones in dung. Setting one hand on the frame, he held it still while he used his knife to slash the edges of the canvas. As soon as it came free, he slipped the knife into his pocket and rolled it tightly.

“There’s no one there.” A voice said.

So they didn’t have a key.

“But the boy said the old man saw a blond man with glasses hanging about,” said another.

“He said hanging about. Not entering. Not breaking in. You can see the place is locked. Just put the seals on. That’ll let people know to stay out. Lazy bastards should have done it when they took the bitch away.”

Marcus heard more rattling, followed by a liquid slapping noise; men from the section’s Public Safety Committee plastering the doors with official seals. The seals that gave public notice the apartment’s residents had been arrested.

He had to get out of the house before he was sealed in. Still, he thought he might have just enough time to save a few more pieces of the lady’s art. Setting the canvas down, he pulled his knife back out and proceeded to free the remaining canvases. Then rolling them together, he snatched up the artist’s carrying tube, flipped open the leather cap and slid them inside

Grasping the strap on the side of the tube, he slung it over his shoulder, and sprinted in the direction of a narrow doorway, his foot striking the discarded copy of De Arte Graphica and sending it spinning.

Any hope that Marguerite de Rouvroy had somehow managed to flee before the raid was dead and gone.

He needed to find the lady before she was, too.

Eighteen

Slumping into a chair in the safehouse’s front room, Marcus pulled off the blond wig and spectacles, put them on the table and rubbed the dent the unfamiliar glasses had left on the bridge of his nose. The trip back to the safehouse had taken considerably longer than the trip to Mme de Rouvroy’s apartments; while there’d been no tussles with pickpockets, he’d climbed several walls, hidden in a particularly odoriferous alley and doubled-back several times until he was satisfied he wasn’t being followed.

Setting a bowl of water down beside the wig and spectacles, Suzanne gestured with a washcloth. “That’s a nasty gash you’ve got there.”

He glanced down at his right hand, turning it this way and that, examining the cuts—one large, two small, on his knuckles. “Should have wrapped my hand in a cloth before I punched out the window, but I was in a bit of a hurry.”

“Run into a problem?”

“A little one,” he admitted, making a pinching gesture with his fingers, and then almost immediately regretting it as the cuts split open and began to bleed. He took the washcloth from Suzanne, dipped it into the water, and began dabbing at them.

“I take it you did not find the lady?”

“Alas, no. Though I did encounter a group of gentlemen with buckets of glue and official seals.”

“Gentlemen?” she raised an amused eyebrow.

“Patriotic citizens,” he amended.

“Before or after you entered Citizeness Rouvroy’s apartments?”

“After.”

“Explains the window.”

He nodded.

“Official seals? I take it she’s been arrested.”

“Apparently so.”

“That should make your job more challenging. But then, I often wonder if you three don’t prefer it that way. Glass of wine?”

Marcus nodded.