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“These aren’t my pants.”
He shoots me a look, but I’m already handing the cashier a twenty-pound note and telling her to keep the change.
“I feel your stinky eye on me,” I say. “Spare me the moralizing. If you get pissy every time I purchase something for you, it’s going to be a tedious partnership.”
We take a corner table. I unwind my scarf and lounge in the chair.
“It’s stink-eye, not stinky eye,” Cole says, sitting across from me. “And I’m not used to people buying me stuff, and I don’t want to be.”
“Is there some sort of benefit to pride that I’m not aware of? It’s one of our favorite sins, after all. I fail to see how it’s a virtue too.”
“It can be,” he says and thanks the server who sets a puffy croissant and cappuccino in front of him. “It’s the suffering toward enlightenment we were talking about last night. You want to make your own way in the world and not have everything handed to you. And if you are fortunate enough to have everything handed to you, you should be grateful and try to help those who don’t.” He takes a sip of coffee, and his eyes fall shut. “Speaking of gratitude, thank you for this. It’s one of the best I’ve ever had.”
Cole has a bit of foam on his lip and swipes it away with his tongue.
I avert my eyes. “I’ll take your word for it.”
“What about this place has bad associations for you?” he asks after a minute. “If you don’t mind me asking.”
I cross my arms and narrow my gaze at him, wondering how much—if anything to tell him. “You are an intriguing creature, Cole Matheson.”
“Nah,” he says. “I used to be, maybe. Once. But we weren’t talking about me.”
“That’s what makes you intriguing. Usually, it only takes one or two questions, and I can get a human blathering on about themselves for hours on end.”
He shrugs. “I like learning about other people. And you, Ambrosius, are far more fascinating than me.”
Cole says nothing more, waiting for me to continue when—or if—I’m so inclined.
“Have you heard of theAffaire du collier de la reine? The Affair of the Queen’s Necklace?”
His eyes narrow in thought, an endearing gesture I’m beginning to become familiar with.
“I think so. It has something to do with Marie Antoinette, right?” Now his eyes widen. “Holy shit. You died in 1786. That was the beginning of the French Revolution, wasn’t it?”
“Close to,” I say. “The Affair certainly didn’t help matters for poor Antoinette.”
“You were there? You knew her?”
I nod. “I was a key player in the Affair, actually, though there is no mention of my name in the history books. On purpose that time, to escape detection, which is why I kept my head.”
Only to die hours later in an inferno…
Cole is listening, rapt, his coffee forgotten. “This I gotta hear.”
“Very well,” I say, sitting back in my seat. “There was a man by the name of Cardinal Louis René Édouard deRohan. Like many men of the church, he was richer than his god would have approved of and had carnal appetites to boot.”
“A cardinal?”
“Indeed. I recall many a party thrown at his palatial estate outside of Paris, where naked bodies writhed in every corner and occultists told fortunes.” I tilt my chin, steeling myself. “My lover at the time, Armand de Villette, had befriended a woman named Jeanne Le Motte. She was a hanger-on, always trying to ingratiate herself with the nobility and trying to catch the Queen’s eye. Rohan, as it turned out, had fallen out of Antoinette’s graces after some nasty comments he made about her mother and was desperate to make right with her.
“Jeanne concocted a plan. She hinted to Rohan that the Queen was warming to him. She had Armand forge letters in Antoinette’s hand, assuring him that a reconciliation was near. The correspondence grew more heated until finally we arranged a midnight rendezvous between Rohan and the Queen in one of her gardens.”
“We?” Cole asks, his eyes wide.
“I procured a prostitute—Nicole Le Guay, sweet girl, not too bright—and dressed her up as the Queen. She bore more than a passing resemblance and often played Antoinette in street theatrics. The silly Cardinal met our Queen in the moonlight where she gave him a red rose and one of Armand’s forged letters that read,I think you know what this means.”
“And it worked?”
