Michael's blade fell to the sand. He dropped to his knees, his hand clasped to the wound. Blood pulsed between his fingers.
There was utter silence in the square, barely a breath. Cordelia didn't move. It had happened so fast that her terror was still mounting even as Michael fell to his knees in the sand. Leo stood over him, the point of his rapier dark with blood.
Then, as the first moment of reaction stirred the rapt crowd, she stepped into the square and ran to the two men.
"Don't!" Leo said as she raced toward him, her eyes wild with joy. The command was spoken softly but was so full of power it stopped her in her tracks. This business was not done yet. She could not embrace him publicly over the body of her dying husband, however vital her need.
She stood still beside them, looking down at her husband, who remained on his knees, clutching his wound fiercely as if he believed he could staunch the blood, heal the wound. His eyes were strangely unfocused.
"Did I draw blood, Leo?" he asked softly. "Tell me I did."
Leo glanced at his torn sleeve. The skin beneath was unmarked. As Leo looked at his arm, Michael, with one last effort, grabbed up his fallen sword and lunged at his enemy. Cordelia kicked the blade from him with a reflex action so fast her foot was a mere blur. Michael fell sideways onto the sword, his blood clotting the sand beneath him as his own blade sliced through his shirt into the flesh beneath.
Leo looked down at his fallen enemy, searing contempt in his eyes. "Die in dishonor, Prince," he said, and it sounded like a curse. Michael's gaze flickered away as he flinched from the dreadful derision. He could feel the poisoned blade cold against his skin, blood seeping from the cut, and his eyes closed.
And then the deadly triangle was shattered as people came running. Surgeons, officials, guardsmen surrounded the dying man, who now lay still on the ground.
Leo stepped aside, his expression cold, his eyes hard as brown stones. Cordelia stepped toward him. He stopped her with upraised hand and she fell back.
Leo walked across the sandy arena to the royal awning. He bowed before the king. His voice rang out across the square.
"Justice is done, monseigneur. I beg leave to remove myself from your court."
"Leave is granted, Viscount Kierston." The king rose and left the square with his family. Toinette looked over her shoulder to where Cordelia still stood, a forlorn figure, beside her husband's body.
Cordelia had heard Leo's words and they fell into her numbed mind like drops of frozen blood. He had formally asked for leave to depart Versailles. Protocol demanded that a guest of the king's could not leave the court without his permission. But was he leaving her? He seemed a stranger to her now. After what she had seen, after what had been said between them, she no longer knew what to expect of him.
He came toward her, his face suddenly younger, his eyes bright as if all shadows had been swept from their corners. He looked as he had when she'd first seen him. When she'd thrown the roses at him and he'd laughed up at her window. An eternity had passed since then-an eternity of terror and passion and confusion. An eternity in which she'd grown so far from the child she'd been as to find that person now unrecognizable as herself.
But now she waited for him to speak the words that would bring an end to that eternity and an end to her own happiness, or mark the beginning of her life.
Leo took her wrist-the one encircled by the serpent bracelet. He unclasped the bracelet and held it in the palm of his hand, looking down at it as if lay sparkling in the rays of the new-risen sun. The diamond-encrusted slipper glittered; the silver rose shimmered; the emerald swan glowed deepest green. Precious stones that for him now held only the memories of death and dishonor. It was not a jewel that his wife would wear. Not a jewel that would accompany them into their future.
"You will not wear this again," he said. He knelt beside Michael's body and opened his still-warm hand. He placed the bracelet in his palm and closed the dead fingers over it. "Let him take the symbol of his own dishonor to his grave."
He stood up and took Cordelia's cold hands in his own warm ones and smiled down at her. The smile he had first given her.
"Come with me now, Cordelia."
She looked up into the golden eyes alight with the merry hazel glints that warmed her to the marrow of her bones. "You do love me, then?"
"O ye of little faith," he said. Cupping her face, he kissed her before the entire town of Versailles and the lingering fascinated court, and Cordelia knew that with this public affirmation, he had laid the past to rest and embraced a future that had no ties to dark vengeance and the spun-sugar court of Versailles.
The Fisherman's Rest, Calais
Where were they? Christian gazed around the dim barn attached to the inn, peering into the shadowy corners. A stray ray of sun from the open door behind him was thick with dust motes from the hayloft above and the straw-littered floor.
"Girls!" he called softly. There was no one around to hear the oddity of the tutor addressing his little boy charges in such a way. "Amelia! Sylvie! Where are you? Your supper's ready."
He stood still, listening. A rat scuttled in the straw bales stacked at the far end of the barn.
Amelia pressed a finger to her lips, not that her sister needed the warning. They burrowed deeper into the fragrant hay in the loft, stuffing their fists into their mouths to keep the giggles in. They heard Christian's feet stomping impatiently below, his voice calling them again in the same insistent, frustrated whisper. Then Sylvie sneezed as a wisp of hay tickled her nose.
Christian glanced up at the loft, then with a sigh climbed the ladder. He stopped at the head and examined the lowceilinged area. They hadn't ventured too far. The two lumps in the hay were a mere foot from where he was standing on the ladder. He stretched out a hand and grabbed. Amelia appeared from the hay, a bright-eyed, red-cheeked bundle of laughing mischief.
Christian slung her over his shoulder and reached for the second lump. Sylvie emerged in like manner, snuffling, her eyes shining.
"You wouldn't have known if I hadn't sneezed," she said gleefully, unprotesting as he bundled her down the ladder ahead of him, following with Amelia.
"I don't know why you did that." Amelia declared from her upside-down position.
"I didn't do it on purpose, silly!"
Christian set Amelia on her feet and tried to look stern, but it was not an expression that came naturally. "Madame Boucher has your supper ready," he scolded. "It's most impolite to keep her waiting, not to mention running me ragged looking all over for you." He surveyed them with something akin to despair. They had lost their caps, and wisps of hay stuck out from their hair, now tumbling untidily around their dirt-streaked faces.
Their hair was the bane of his life. Cordelia had shown him how to plait it tightly, so that the braids could be hidden under the caps that formed an essential part of their disguise, but his long, sensitive musician's fingers became all thumbs when it came to dealing with the fine, silky golden strands.
, "Where are your caps?"
Amelia's hand flew to her head. "It's gone," she declared unnecessarily.
"So's mine," her sister affirmed with a nod.
" Where have they gone?" Christian asked.
"We must have lost 'em in the hay," Amelia ventured.
Christian glanced back at the ladder. He'd have to go and look, since the children couldn't appear in the inn's parlor without them. But what was he to do with the twins while he went up to the loft? If he turned his back on them, they'd be off again.
He felt absurdly like the hapless ferryman in the old riddle who had to ferry a carrot, a rabbit, and a wolf across the river but could only take one at a time in the boat.