Page 79 of A Secret Correspondence
A creaky floorboard near the front of the shop made Marguerite’s breath catch. Did this man have help coming?
Or was it help for Marguerite?
The Frenchman smashed into her knee in his haste to round her chair. He took hold of her upper arm firmly and did not release it.
Footsteps pounded from the shop into the parlor, coming to an immediate halt.
“Stop,” the Frenchman said, his gravelly voice driving unpleasant chills down Marguerite’s spine. He yanked the bag from her head, pulling strands of hair with it. Candles were lit in the parlor, but the room was dim, and she was disoriented. It took a moment for Marguerite to gather her wits, but the moment her gaze cleared, she connected with Samuel’s clear blue eyes. The familiar lines of his face, the uncharacteristically disheveled hair. His presence was an instant boon. Elation filled her, growing as she recognized Oliver and Jacob bookending him.
Her friends had arrived. They wouldn’t allow anything to happen to her.
Only, a strange energy permeated the room. The Frenchman’s fingers continued to dig into her arm, and Samuel wasn’t moving. He stood frozen in the doorway between the parlor and the shop, his arms stiff as though he had been dipped in candle wax. That was when Marguerite recognized the pure fear radiating in his eyes.
Then she felt the cold steel against her throat.
“Do not move,” the man said.
But this time, his voice was different. No longer coated with gravel, thick and hoarse. It was smooth, familiar. The warm tone of someone she knew well…had known for most of her life.
Marguerite’s heart spiked in a different way, pain and shock curling around each other. “Paul?”
He let out a strained sound. “I tried to keep it from you,ma chére. I did not want you to be hurt.”
Her throbbing temple said otherwise. She recoiled from him, but it only served to press her skin against the knife. Sharp pain stung her neck, and a warm drop of blood welled and dripped down her skin.
“If you hurt her,” Samuel growled, his voice low and dangerous, “you will regret stepping foot in this town.”
“This will all end the moment Marie-Louise tells me where the diamonds are.”
She noticed the confusion crossing her friends’ faces and closed her eyes. There would be no keeping her past from them now.
“Ah, she has not told you?” The note of glee in Paul’s voice was alarming. “Are any of you aware that you are in the presence of the daughter of the great Comte de Agnon?”
Surprise lit Samuel’s face briefly before he shuttered the expression away. “I know you were familiar with the family.” His voice was remarkably calm. “So familiar, you still carry on a friendship with their daughter.”
“They saved my life, and I owed them a debt of gratitude. The least I could do was see to it their daughter made it safely across the channel and found a good occupation.”
“While you helped yourself to her mother’s trunk?” Oliver asked. “Hoping to find her jewels, I imagine?”
“It would have made things easier, yes. But they were not packed away with her other things.” Paul’s hand slackened on Marguerite’s shoulder, but the knife did not move. “I kept the trunk, though. One never knows when those sorts of things would become useful. Marie-Louise had no need for fine things as a modiste’s apprentice. And saving the trunk allowed me to use it now.”
Samuel scoffed. “You must accept defeat. It has been twenty years since Marguerite was separated from her mother. The diamonds could be anywhere.”
“But they are not.” The cold, confident way Paul spoke sent a chill running over Marguerite’s skin. “Tell me. How does a penniless apprentice find the funds to purchase a shop of her own?”
Dread flushed through Marguerite’s body assilence washed through the room. The candles flickered on the hearth and the table near the window as though they, too, felt the breadth of the revelation now making its way through each person’s mind. Paul was asking the question she had hoped no one would ever consider. He was leading them down a line of reasoning she had gone to great lengths to avoid.
“How does she find the finances to purchase the items necessary to fill the shop?” he continued.
“From her husband, I assume,” Oliver said. Bless the man for thinking the best of her. But now she knew what was coming, and the total loss of her friendships would undoubtedly be the result. Her body deflated, hope leaving and darkness edging in.
Paul barked a condescending laugh. “Marie-Louise must not consider any of you her true friends, for she has not told you much of anything, it seems. She has never married. Madame Marguerite Perreau was a lie to protect herself from those who would not patronize her shop were she a single woman.” He gave this speech with a modicum of pride, as though he was satisfied to be the one to break their good opinion of her. “Before that, her English name was Mary Perry. And before that, Marie-Louise Perrault in France. Our little mouse has been dishonest for a long time.”
“With good reason, it seems,” Samuel countered, “if there are people who would use her ill merely from knowing who her parents were.”
“I have always cared for Marie-Louise,” Paul snapped. “I did notchooseto become destitute. I had hoped to spare her from the knowledge that it was I who desired her jewels. Indeed, I still care greatly for her, but I have nothing left. Those boys never paid me enough to tutor them, and you know it, Marie-Louise. I had no other choice. Yet you all had to meddle and ruin everything.”
“Why did you wait so long?” Marguerite asked, her voicecutting through the room. “If you’ve had the trunk in your possession all these years, why now?”
