Page 37 of The Agent and the Outlaw
“I’ve been trying to protect you,” he grumbled.
“Well, I don’t need your protection,” I shot back.
He eyed my wounded shoulder and scoffed. “Yes, I forgot. You’re some secret agent for a mysterious, mythical order of powerful zealots charged with protecting the people of France from supernatural threats.”
“That’s not entirely correct, but you’re on the right track,” I replied tartly.
“Ha!”
“At least I explained my reasons for attempting to kill Sade,” I said. “You’ve been perfectly content to keep your own secrets and not offer me anything. You could be some escaped lunatic who hunts down noblemen with crossbows just to pass the time. Or maybe you’re a social radical, trying to steadily eliminate the aristocracy…perhaps even a jealous, scorned lover of the torturous madman and you came out to settle a score.”
Anger bloomed in his expression, turning his whole face red and his jade eyes wild. I sensed I’d touched a nerve, but I wasn’t sure which one.
“Silence!” he bellowed. “For the love of God, can’t you be anything other than aggravating?”
I glared at him. “Can’tyoube anything other than infuriating? If you’re so aggravated and I’m such an inconvenient distraction and a danger to you, thenleave!I didn’t ask you to remain!” To emphasize my point, I threw one of the pillows at him. Despite the action startling him, he caught it mid-air.The battle-hardened reflexes of a soldier.
“I will,” he fired back, but his tone had lost some of its edge. “As soon as you’re well again.”
“I’m fine,” I sniffed. “How many times do I have to tell you? I don’t need your protection.”
“Maybe you don’t,” he said wearily. “But you have it anyway. I am honor-bound.”
“Oh,hangyour honor,” I tossed back. I almost winced at how petulant I sounded.
“I won’t,” he said sullenly. “My honor is all I have left.”
I snorted in derision. “This from a man who kills without reason.”
His eyes snapped to mine. “Never. There isalwaysa reason.”
“What, your own perverse pleasure?”
He looked at me then, anger waning, and came to sit at the foot of the bed. He stared at his boots, or perhaps it was the floor, but either way, he could not meet my eyes. He was quiet for a time, thinking, and when he spoke, his voice was thick with emotion again. Not anger, this time, but a haunted sadness. My heart clenched and I suspected I would regret my words.
“I killed Sade for revenge,” he said quietly. “Not for my own perverse pleasure, though I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel some satisfaction from watching him die.”
“Who was he to you?” I asked.
He blew out a breath. “To me? A stranger, in fact.”
I made a noise of frustration, and he finally looked up at me.
“He was not a stranger to my sister, Marie, or to her son, Louis. Marie’s husband died some years ago, leaving them in dire circumstances. My nephew was still a boy then. Marie was utterly shattered. It had been a love match, you see. He’d been a tailor, exceptionally skilled but barely able to put bread on the table. My father never approved of the match and withheld his wealth and connections only until Marie was desperate. He only stepped in to offer assistance on the condition that he would be in charge of Louis’s education and upbringing. Marie had no choice but to agree. She thought my father would send Louis to the elite military academy that he’d attended, but instead, my father wanted more for the boy. He wanted Louis to have better for himself—connections, a chance for a wealthy match, exposure to a world that was now beyond Marie’s reach. To do this, my father reached out to an old friend from school—from the military academy.”
“Sade,” I breathed. “Your father and he were friends?”
Antoine’s jaw tightened and he nodded once.
“My father is a brilliant general, Charlotte. He never loses in battle because he will sacrificeanythingto get what he wants. The lives of others mean nothing to him. I can only imagine what he offered Sade in exchange for Louis’s tutelage and introduction to court. I shudder to think.”
I chewed on my lip. “You think your father offered Sade Louis’s innocence in order to gain his aristocratic influence?”
He nodded. “Four and a half months after Louis was sent to Sade, we received word that he’d taken ill and died. Marie was inconsolable with grief, so I retrieved Louis’s body myself to make the funeral preparations. If it was illness that took Louis’s life, I’ll throw myself into the Seine,” he said bitterly.
“What do you mean? How did he die?”
“I recognize signs of torture when I see them, Charlotte. The marks on his body—it was unspeakable. He was only fourteen years old.” A muscle below his eye ticked, and it struck me that perhaps he wanted to shed tears for his nephew and sister but simply refused. He clenched his fist. “Of course, most people didn’t know about Sade’s reputation for depravity at that point, but the rumors would soon follow. Louis became just one of a number of the marquis’s victims.”
