A Midnight Dance (48 page)

Curtly, he dealt out the order to take ten of the men and escort Sabine back to Paris and then home.

“Yes, my lord.”

“I’ll be going with Luc, Simon, and the remaining men to see Valentin.” He was on the precipice. All that he wanted was within his reach. So why did he feel like he’d lost . . . everything.

The misery inside him was suffocating. His only foreseeable joy was what he would do to Valentin when he got his hands on him. Beyond that, he wouldn’t think about the future. A future without his beautiful forest fairy.

Jules and his party of twenty thundered into the courtyard of d’Argon’s country estate two days later. Much to his amazement, a somber majordomo immediately opened the door upon hearing the horses’ hooves. It was as though he’d been waiting in the vestibule the entire time to bid them entrance.

Prepared for anything, Jules followed the man into the Marquis’ home with Luc, Simon, and the men on his heels. Crossing the foyer, he heard weeping. Women’s tears. How many women, he couldn’t guess, but the sound came from behind one of the many closed doors.

Stopping before one of the wooden portals, the servant rapped lightly on it and, upon hearing the gentle command from within, opened the door and allowed them admittance into Valentin’s study.

He found Valentin seated at his large wooden desk, slumped in his chair, his appearance haggard, looking as though he’d been drinking and perhaps even crying for hours. Maybe days. Valentin lifted his red-rimmed eyes, met Jules’s gaze, and immediately began to weep.

Jules exchanged glances with Luc, his brother looking no less surprised. Vengeance had burbled in Jules’s veins over the last couple of days. The pity that the sight before him stirred was unexpected. Unwelcome. Anger was easier to deal with—and all that kept his pain of losing Sabine at bay.

Jules turned to the men crowding the room. “Out,” he ordered everyone but Luc and Simon. It wasn’t until they’d left that Jules approached the older Aristo, stopping before the desk.

Valentin wiped the tears with his hand and sniffled. “How is Mademoiselle Laurent?”

Yet another surprise. Jules hadn’t expected that question. Nor the sharp stab in the heart at the mere mention of Sabine.

With three quick strides he reached Valentin, grabbed him by his doublet, and yanked him up off the chair. “What is it you’re asking, Valentin? How badly Vittry hurt her? How destroyed she is over the death of her sister?”

Valentin didn’t so much as flinch but remained woeful. “I didn’t want her hurt or to have her sister involved. Or killed. It was Leon who did that.”

“No? You just wanted my father
executed
, is that it?” He gave Valentin a fierce shake. “You pretended to be his friend. I thought you were mine.”

Valentin didn’t try to extricate himself from Jules’s hold. “What would you do, Jules, if your family were faced with ruin? If someone was threatening your good name? Your very existence.”

“What are you talking about? I don’t want riddles. I want you to admit what you did! Admit you destroyed an innocent man.”

“He may not have been a
Frondeur
. But he was not an innocent man.”

Jules slammed him down on the desk, pulled out his dagger from inside his sleeve, and pressed it to Valentin’s throat. “I should kill you right now. You deserve to die. Do you know how many lives you have ruined? How many people have suffered because of what you’ve done.
Jésus-Christ
, you even killed your own minion, Vittry. Don’t bother to deny it. You dropped your ring in his den of horror.”

Valentin broke into sobs. “I’ll not deny it . . . An-Any of it . . . I have lived with this on my conscience for years. I can do it no longer. That is why I shot Leon. He was mad . . . out of control. He was going to kill you and Luc. I couldn’t allow that to happen. I c-couldn’t . . .”

Jules hauled Valentin upright, but kept the blade at his throat. “Why do Luc and I matter to you?”

“Because this was between Charles and me. I didn’t want the matter to spill over onto you, or anyone else. I did my best to lessen the impact on both of you. I got you out of the Bastille. I couldn’t have you to languish there . . . I’m sorry for what I have done to your lives. I’m sorry I struck a bargain with that devil, de Vittry. He killed the mademoiselle in that fire . . . He killed Bailloux—his twisted way to thwart you from regaining your previous prominence . . .” He covered his face with his hands, his shoulders hunched, his posture that of a broken man.

Jules looked at Luc. He simply shook his head.

“Why, Valentin?” Jules asked. “What is this matter between you and my father? What made you do this?”

“I turned down your father’s offer to marry my Caroline to you. He became incensed. Threatened I’d rue the day I refused to join our houses and that he would never forget the insult. I had no objections to you as a husband for my daughter. It was your father that gave me pause. I know you loved him . . . but he was a different man when he wasn’t around you. Caroline is such a delicate flower.” He hung his head, softly crying.

“So you had him arrested on false charges because of an empty threat? A meaningless utterance said in a moment of anger?”

“No. I did nothing. I wanted to forget his words and desperately prayed that he had, too. Two months later, Leon approached me. He’d learned Charles was plotting to have me arrested as a
Frondeur
. My loyalties have
always
been with the Crown. He said he’d help rid me of Charles if I gave him what he wanted . . .” He choked out a sob. “He wanted . . . his brother dead . . . for the lands and title he held.”

Disgusted, Jules released Valentin with a shove and stepped away. “You killed Sébastien? Why would you believe that serpent? He was nothing but a lying, opportunistic—”

“I didn’t believe him! Not at first. I refused to strike such a malevolent bargain. But then he told me Charles was blackmailing the Archbishop de Divonne to turn against me. I went to see Bailloux. He broke down and admitted that your father was threatening to expose his illicit affair with the Comtesse de Tonnere if he didn’t conspire against me. He was most enamored with her and feared what her husband would do to her if he found out. That was the moment I knew I had no choice. I couldn’t expose Charles’s fiendish plan against me. It would be my word against his. Likely, we’d both be hanged in the end, for there was such scrutiny and chaos after the
Fronde
. Any whispered connection to the
Frondeurs
and you could be arrested and detained in prison indefinitely. My future and that of my family hung in the balance. Either I sat back and let him destroy me, or I took action and stopped him.” He quietly cried. “I—I am not a violent man . . .” he bemoaned. “The night I agreed to Leon’s conditions, I wept till dawn . . . couldn’t eat or sleep for almost a week. I couldn’t kill Sébastien . . . I convinced Bailloux to help me and . . . together we poisoned him. Leon took care of fabricating letters to use against Charles.”

Jules seethed. “You expect me to believe this story? That all this was because of a mere insult over a betrothal?”

“It is true! Every word. I—I have proof!” He twisted around and picked up a stack of parchments, his hands atremble.

Jules snatched them from his hand. Staring back at him was a very familiar penmanship.
Isabelle
. Luc was immediately at his side, peering down at the writing.

“Where did you get these?” Luc demanded.

Valentin dropped back into his chair and wept and wept and wept.

“Answer!” Jules shouted.

“L-Leon gave them to me. He said it would help remind me what kind of man Charles was . . .”

Jules’s gaze darted to the parchments, scanning Isabelle’s daily accounts of her employment.

Jules closed his eyes briefly. God help him, so did he, no matter how hard he tried not to.

A rueful smile tugged at his lips. The very same silly chicken story that Sabine had recounted. There was no denying these parchments were authentic. These were Isabelle’s writings.

Jules’s stomach fisted.

Jules wanted to stop reading, gripped by the feeling that what he was about to read, he didn’t want to know. His instincts told him that his doubts, the suspicions he was having about the authenticity of his father’s character, were about to be realized.

His stomach clenched tighter. Stop reading . . .
now
.

Jules clutched the parchments in a white-knuckle grip. Page after page he read. Instant after instant of abhorrent behavior. Ruthlessness. Viciousness. Where was his honor?
A man must live honorably
. How many times had his father told him that?
Jésus-Christ
, where was his decency?

Jules’s heart and head reeled in turmoil.

Jules reached the final pages. The shakiness of the handwriting, the water stains on the pages—likely from tears—hit him hard. He knew at a glance, Isabelle was distressed.

“Jules?” Luc placed his hand on Jules’s arm. “Are you all right? You’re . . . pale.”

His heart pounding, Jules looked up and realized he was sweating profusely, yet his limbs felt chilled. He felt hot. Cold. Sick.

Heartsick.

His head was spinning with memories, of Luc as a boy, and the many times he’d found him crying over the ill-treatment received by their father. Then there was the weeping . . . that terrible sorrowful weeping he’d often heard coming from his mother’s chambers, now echoed in his ears. Moments in his life he’d dismissed, drowned beneath his adoration for a man who never deserved his respect, reverberated inside him, leaving him quaking and out of breath.

He sucked in a ragged breath, trying to sufficiently fill his lungs, struggling to quell his rapid breathing and maintain some semblance of composure. But then his gaze fell on the parchments once more. A bellow shot up his throat and out his mouth as he smashed his fist against the wall.