Courtship and Curses (32 page)

Breathe, Sophie
, a cool voice in her mind reminded her gently. Why had he come here—and dressed in buckskin trousers and dusty boots and traveling coat, as if he’d just arrived in town? She gulped and wished she could sit down, but there was no time for that now. “N-not at all, Lord Woodbridge. Will you please excuse us? I have to talk to Parthenope now—”

But Parthenope was already pulling her, none too gently, to the edge of the crowd. “Sophie, you’ve got to hear. Perry’s just ridden straight from Ghent, and he’s got something to tell you.”

Sophie shook her head. “It will have to wait. It happened—the duke is gone! Amélie’s done it, right in front of everyone!”

Parthenope and Peregrine exchanged looks. “Tell her,” Parthenope commanded.

Peregrine swallowed. “Lady Sophie, please excuse my appearing like this. I’m not quite sure how to start—”

Parthenope groaned. “Oh, never mind all that now. Sophie, you were wrong—or rather, you were right!”

Sophie was starting to become annoyed. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. Parthenope, we have to
do
something—”

Peregrine spoke, forestalling his cousin. “She means that you were right about Madame Carswell not being responsible for trying to kill your father and the others.”

Sophie shook her head impatiently. “No—Amélie already did something to the duke—”

“Sophie, please listen to me,” Peregrine interrupted. “You know I started working at the War Office after we—after you left for Brussels. Lord Palmerston assigned me to keeping his correspondence with King Louis’s Minister of War—”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, skip all that!” Parthenope demanded. “Sophie, Peregrine has found something out about the Comte de Carmouche-Ponthieux.”

Sophie blinked. “What does he have to do with any of this?”

“It turns out that he’s not working for the king after all,” Peregrine said. “In fact, no one at the king’s court has ever heard of him, including the king himself. All his credentials to Lord Palmerston are forgeries. I went to Ghent myself to make absolutely sure and came straight here.”

Sophie felt as if she were trying to think through treacle. What did this matter now, when the duke was gone? “I don’t understand—who could he be working for, then?”

“Whom do you
think
he might be working for?” Parthenope looked exasperated. “You were right that the assassin isn’t Amélie. It’s the comte! We wondered who might have been responsible for trying to kill the War Office people … well, wasn’t he also there at every attempt—in the park and at the opera and all? It all fits together! He already knew who your family was—what would have been more natural than for him to ‘discover’ the lost love of his youth in London while posing as an envoy for the king? It gave him the perfect opportunity to be in the center of things, with access to your father and all the—”

Sophie closed her eyes. “Parthenope, aren’t you forgetting one vital piece of information?”

“What you saw this afternoon isn’t proof that it’s Amélie!”

“Isn’t it?”

“What information?” Peregrine asked.

Parthenope looked at Sophie for a few measuring seconds, then turned to Peregrine. “The fact that whoever tried to kill Sophie’s papa and the others was using magic to do so.”

“Parthenope!” Sophie grabbed her arm. Oh, how could she have said that?

“He has to know, because we need to do something
now
,” Parthenope said firmly. “Sophie is a—”

Sophie dug her nails into Parthenope’s arm. Parthenope winced. “I mean, she can sense when magic is being done.”

“Magic,” Peregrine said carefully.

“Yes, magic.” Parthenope shook off Sophie’s hand. “Sophie sensed it at all the other attempts in London and thinks she saw Amélie putting an enchantment here in the ballroom.”

“The murder attempts—they were accomplished by magic,” he repeated.

Parthenope patted his arm. “You’re really taking this very well, you know. I’m impressed.”

Sophie agreed that he seemed to be accepting this with remarkable composure, but there wasn’t time to think about him now. “I didn’t just think I saw Amélie,” she said angrily. “What about Hester? He felt it too—you’re the one who—”

Parthenope’s face lit up. “Hester! Of course!” She hurried away from them.

“Parthenope, what are you doing?” Sophie called after her. Parthenope ignored her.

Peregrine cleared his throat gently. “Sophie, I’m sorry. This is … this is not how I would have chosen to come and apologize to you.”

Sophie felt faint again under his pleading gaze. “You don’t have to apologize to me. It was—I was the one who was wrong. Amélie—I didn’t want her to be a spy for Napoléon.”

“But I don’t think she is.”

“And I don’t think it could be the comte. That would mean—” She looked away, blinking back tears. That would mean that he’d deliberately insinuated himself into their family … and back into poor, innocent Aunt Molly’s heart.

She felt him touch her arm. “Sophie, can you—is magic real, then? Can you really sense it?”

It was as if his question had opened a yawning chasm before her. How should she answer him? Should she tell him what she was—or what she once had been? What would he do if she did?

Well, she would find out, before he apologized to her … or before she let her feelings for him out of their tight little prison. She took a deep breath. “Yes, but it’s more than just—”

“Here we are!” Parthenope pushed her way between them, one hand raised, on which perched a grumpy-looking Hester. “Come on, Sophie.” She took Sophie’s hand and pulled her along.

“What are you doing?”

“If he can find spells, then maybe he can find the person who made the spell,” Parthenope said. “Will you believe
him
?”

“A spell?” she heard a woman say behind her. “Did that girl just say it was a spell? Witchcraft? Someone’s done a spell on the duke?”

“Now you’ve done it,” Sophie muttered to Parthenope.

“Twaddle,” Parthenope said, still pushing through the crowd, but her usually pink cheeks were pale.

“A witch?” someone else called. “She’s a witch! It must be that woman—the one who was dancing with him.”

“Foul sorcery!” an older woman cried, and fainted.

“Nonsense!” someone said loudly. Sophie looked up.

Papa strode into the middle of the circle just as they reached its edge. He walked up to Amélie and took her hand. “Are you listening to yourselves?” he asked contemptuously. “Muttering about witchcraft and spells? Are we living in 1815 or 1615?”

“Papa,” Sophie whispered to herself. Should she shout to him to run? That he was putting himself in the direst of danger?

“Well?” he said again.

No one answered him, though there was muttering. He ignored it. “I say again, it’s utter nonsense. Madame Carswell is not a witch and has not harmed the duke in the least.”

“Then where is he?” a tall woman called.

“I don’t know. Moreover, neither does Madame Carswell. Do you, madame?”

She shook her head. “
Monsieur le Duc … c’est incroyable
 … I do not know—I did nothing. He was here, and then—” She turned and buried her face in his shoulder.

Papa looked around at the crowd. “You heard her. She has done nothing ill tonight. The duke’s officers and I will—”

“She’s a Frenchwoman!” she heard someone shout. “Why should we believe she’s done nothing to our duke?”

“A Frenchwoman! What does anyone know about her?”

“A widow from India, someone said.”

“A convenient story…”

“You don’t think she’s—”

Sophie and Parthenope had reached the edge of the crowd. Just beyond Papa and Amélie, Sophie could see Aunt Molly clinging to the comte. He had put a comforting arm around her shoulders.

“All right, little man.” Parthenope brought Hester close to her face and spoke in an unnaturally high voice. “Someone here did the big cold spell you showed me today. Will Mama’s little love show me who made it, pretty please?”

“Oh lord, Parthenope, he won’t—”

Parthenope glared at her over Hester’s head. “You’re not helping. That’s my good little boy. Go show Mama now?”

Hester twisted around and scratched at his back with his beak, then looked, unblinking, at Parthenope.

“Go, Hester!” Parthenope threw her hand up in the air.

Hester flapped in place for a minute, and Sophie was sure he’d settle back down on Parthenope’s shoulder and call her a turnip. But then he began to circle the crowd, his purple head and green wings bright under the chandeliers. He glanced down at Sophie; she could see his dark, sparkling eye examining her. Then he circled again, seeming to search the crowd.

“Oh, what a darling little bird! Such pretty plumage!” a lady in a feathered turban cried loudly. Heads turned from Amélie and Papa.

“Don’t you even think about it,” Parthenope growled under her breath. “Come on, Hester!”

Hester did one more circuit of the room to the accompaniment of more exclamations of surprise. Then his wings slowed, and he arced down … down … and came to rest on the comte’s shoulder.

“By the pricking of my thumbs!” Hester proclaimed.

Chapter

19

“
Hester!
” Parthenope cried. “You
good
little boy!”

“Silly bird!” Aunt Molly scolded, twisting out from under the comte’s arm to look at him. “What are you doing here? Now, don’t go doing to my Auguste what you did to poor old Lady Exton. You quite ruined her shawl, you know.”

Sophie stared at the comte as he turned his head slowly to look at the bird on his shoulder. It
was
him. Thoughts and memories of the last months began to rearrange themselves into a new pattern. How could she not have even suspected him, even after what Peregrine had just told them?

Because she hadn’t wanted to.

Before she could think anything more, the comte said something, very quietly. Hester stiffened and tumbled from his shoulder.

“Hester!” Parthenope launched herself across the floor and scooped him up, holding him against her breast. “If you’ve hurt him, you—you—”

“
Sorcier
,” Sophie finished for her, stepping into the circle as well.

The comte looked at her, and a slight smile touched the corners of his mouth—but not, she noticed, his eyes … his eyes that she had always thought so sad and sincere. “Ah, Lady Sophie. I think I am not wrong in saying that it takes one to know one.”

Sophie lifted her chin. It wouldn’t do any good to deny it, and it would do even less good for him to know that just now, her magic was all but nonexistent. Let him think there was at least someone present who could possibly oppose him. “What if I am?” she said haughtily.

“I suspected as much,” he said, nodding. “When I saw you on the stairs after Marie’s fall, I wondered. And when the glass broke in your father’s hand at Lady Montashton’s—”

“It was poisoned,” Sophie said. “I could tell.”

“Sophie, what is going on here?” Papa asked. “What poison? What are you talking about?”

The comte glanced at him and made a small gesture, and Papa clutched at his throat, eyes wide. Sophie stepped forward, but the comte shook his head. “I am not hurting him—merely keeping him from disturbing our conversation.” He glanced around the crowd staring at him fearfully, inching away. “I shall be happy to do the same to anyone else.”

“Let them leave,” Sophie said. “No one else here matters.”

“On the contrary.” The comte bowed ironically, one hand on his breast. “I am pleased to give them a little sample of what I can do. It will make it easier for them to be docile when His Imperial Majesty returns to Brussels in the not-very-distant future.”

Sophie felt Peregrine come up behind her, shaking with repressed emotion. She put a warning hand behind her and felt him take it and squeeze it gently, then release it. His touch somehow made her feel braver. “So you admit that you work for the emperor,” she said.

“But of course. I am a little surprised that no one suspected me until now. You are very credulous, you English.”

“And the duke?”

The comte smiled. “The duke is quite unharmed. He is just elsewhere. His presence here in Brussels was thought …
unnecessary
by my emperor. That is why I was sent here, you will understand—to remove him, by whatever means came to hand.” He nodded to Amélie. “It was nothing personal, madame. You were simply a convenience.”

She stared at him in horror.

“And I suppose my aunt was a convenience as well,” Sophie said.

The comte shrugged, but a slight flush told Sophie that she’d scored a hit. “You are correct … but maybe a little more than a convenience. More—let me see—more a chance for retribution. It was a—an added bonus to the task.”

“Retribution against an innocent woman who loved you?”

“Against her family who kept us apart, who thought I was not good enough for her. She herself was no longer important, except as my tool.”

Aunt Molly was staring up at him. “Auguste,” she said, and there was little of her usual vagueness left in her eyes.

“I am sorry, Marie,” he said. “It has been pleasant, seeing you again. Perhaps once, all those years ago … if your family had not been so proud, things might have been different.”

“I had thought they would be different now,” she said, her voice cracking. “You made me think that we would finally be—that you loved me.”

He shook his head. “Of course I had to make you think that. I had a job to do. But it was nothing more. My wife is a patriotic woman, but she would not be pleased if I were to turn bigamist, even for the emperor’s cause.”

“Your wife.…” Aunt Molly’s face seemed to change somehow, as if the bones beneath it were disintegrating.

“My wife,” he agreed. “Did you really think I had stayed single all these years, after what your father did to me? It was a pleasure to come back and try to take my revenge on your family, all in the name of working for my emperor.”

Amélie, who had still been staring at him, straightened her shoulders, gave him a defiant look, and put her arms around Aunt Molly, drawing her away and turning her back on him. It was a magnificent gesture, and Sophie would have cheered if her anger hadn’t almost choked her. How could he have been so cruel? Being a spy was one thing, but to deceive poor innocent Aunt Molly—