Chapter Seven - All I Want is to Brood in Peace

“I don’t give a damn if Étienne already confessed,” I huffed. “We’re getting him released.”

I shoved myself into the carriage, stomping over to the cerulean velvet seats. Clumps of mud crumbled off my shoes and scattered across the ground like chocolate cake crumbs. I stomped on those, too, grinding the dirt into the carriage floors. Étienne could be silent and secretive all he wished, but I didn’t care. I didn’t care if he really had killed the coachman after all. I didn’t care if helping him put my own safety at risk. I refused to let him die.

Neither Renée nor Madeleine responded to my outburst. The second I told Renée about Étienne’s death sentence, she’d gone silent, walking to the carriage with her head tipped up to the starlit sky. And Madeleine looked as if she wished to be absolutely anywhere but here.

“It won’t be too difficult,” I continued, ignoring the silence. “Paris society is full of raging idiots who will believe what they hear no matter what. If we simply convince them the prison governor thinks Étienne is innocent. . . Ah! I know.” I banged my fist into my palm. “I shall pretend to be the governor and tell everyone Étienne didn’t kill the coachman after all. I can find a ratty wig and a pair of high breeches and powder my face so I look like a wrinkled old man. Or we can pretend to be ghosts and scare the governor into letting Étienne go.” I turned to my sister. “You know where Henri keeps all the white sheets, do you not? If we take those—wait, are you crying?”

Renée was, in fact, crying.

Her face was buried in an embroidered kerchief, her body facing the window. But her shoulders shook, and the pink edges of her kerchief blew in and out whenever she sucked in a breath.

Suddenly, I wasn’t scared anymore. I was furious.

How dare Étienne keep the truth from us? How dare he think it all right to die and leave Renée and me alone? He’d always been there no matter what—the moment either of us were in need of comfort or care or love. Renée, Étienne, and I were family. No, we were closer than family. We’d found a way to make it so the biting remarks from nobility and the neglect from our parents and the things that made us different from everyone else didn’t matter. We’d found a way to create our own little world, where nothing and no one could hurt us. How could Étienne not think that was important anymore?

I wasn’t only going to get Étienne released to save his life; I was going to get him released so he’d be forced to apologize for being the goddamn worst.

By the time we arrived at our home in Le Marais, I was so angry about the whole ordeal, I practically flew out of the carriage and ran to the gardens without so much as a goodbye to Madeleine. Not the most gentlemanly thing I’d ever done, but I knew Madeleine would be far more successful at calming Renée, and I needed time alone to think.

I was in the gardens, with my head buried in my knees, when a branch snapped in the hedgerow at my side. I lifted my head and peered into the darkness, so caught up in my despair, I forgot to be frightened. At least, until a branch snapped again. I leapt up, equal parts terrified and annoyed.

I turned, preparing to flee just as a figure jumped out of the hedges and tackled me to the ground.

All the air in my lungs escaped in a single breath, my hands flying up to cover my face. While I wasn’t the strongest of gentlemen, I wasn’t the frailest, either. I could tell the man pinning me down was much smaller than I, and judging by the pressure of his hands around my shoulders, weaker as well. I took this as a sign I could overpower him. Without a second thought, I slammed my knee into his crotch.

The bastard didn’t budge. The grip around my shoulders tightened, and he leaned over, placing more weight on my thighs to keep me trapped. Then he turned his head, and a long curl of hair tumbled across his shoulder, brushing against my cheek.

Wait. . .

I moved my hands away from my face to get a better view of my attacker, and my eyes fell on the soft set of his features. And, incidentally, the two rather obvious curves under his shirt.

“Good God, you’re a woman,” I said, struggling to free myself from her grasp. In part because I wasn’t enthused about being held to the ground against my will, and in part because I’d been tackled by a woman, and if anyone saw me in this state, I’d have to resign myself to ridicule for the rest of my life.

“Of course I’m a woman,” she responded. “I wasn’t exactly trying to hide the fact.”

“But you’re wearing breeches!”

“Spoken like a man who has never had to sneak around in stays and a skirt.”

“Mademoiselle,” I said, trying to maneuver myself out of her hold while simultaneously avoiding the more delicate areas of her body, “I kindly request you get off before I call for the servants.”

“Gladly. As soon as you tell me where Étienne has gone.”

I froze. “What?”

“Étienne!” she said. “You’re that obnoxious younger brother of his, are you not? You must know where he’s gone. I’ve been searching around this house all evening, and I have yet to see him.”

A minute too late, the pieces clicked together in my head.

The woman I left the gardens with isn’t my lover, Étienne had said. She’s my sister.

I scrambled back, shock giving me enough temporary strength to slip out from beneath her body and land myself in the rose bushes behind my head. The thorns scratched against my skin, but I hardly paid them any mind. My focus was directed on her alone, and only then did I take in the tawny cast to her skin and her dark hair, strands breaking free from her updo and trailing down her shoulders. Étienne’s sister. Étienne’s true and blood related sister.

And then, as I always did when faced with less than favorable circumstances, I panicked.

“Renée!” I yelled. “Renée, come out here! It’s—”

Étienne’s sister clapped her hand over my mouth. “Hush. No one can know I’m here.”

I contemplated licking her hand so she’d release me, but then something sharp poked into my side, and I looked down to see a knife being held against my embroidered waistcoat.

“Let me go!” I yelled, but her hand was still clapped over my mouth, so it came out sounding more like, “Etmeoh!”

“If I take my hand off your mouth, will you promise not to yell?” she asked.

I nodded, my chest loosening with relief, despite the still-present blade.

“Now,” she said once her hand was back at her side, “allow me to ask again. Where is Étienne?”

“He’s in the Bastille. He’s been arrested.”

Her knife clattered to the ground. “No. He told me he’d escape. He told me he wouldn’t let them catch him.”

“What do you mean?”

“Olivier!”

Both Étienne’s sister and I whipped our heads to where Renée sprinted down the stone steps. She was barefoot, her dark hair loose and her pink dressing gown flapping about her legs. When she reached us, her gaze landed on the knife resting atop a pile of fallen rose petals, and she kicked it away as if it were a diseased rat.

“Get away from my brother!” Renée screamed, reaching out to pull Étienne’s sister back by the collar of her shirt. “Don’t you dare hurt him!”

Étienne’s sister leapt to retrieve the dagger from between the bush’s thorned branches. Renée’s grip around her collar slipped, and the girl fell forward, landing in a pile of upturned earth. The moonlight washed over the planes of her face then, bringing out the softness of her cheeks and the long curve of her neck.

“You’re not a man,” Renée said.

Étienne’s sister sighed, brushing away the dirt and grass on her breeches. “Does everyone in your family have horrendous eyesight?”

Renée’s eyes flicked from her to me and back again, the blush in her pale cheeks visible despite the darkness. “Sorry. Did I. . . were you two. . . did I interrupt something?”

“No!” we said in unison.

Renée’s gaze moved to the knife in the bushes, its silver blade barely visible among a cluster of olive-tinted leaves. “Then I don’t understand. Who are you? Why are you in our gardens, and why in God’s name do you have a knife?”

“Renée,” I said, standing and plucking a few stray rose petals from my waistcoat, “allow me to introduce the sister Étienne never told us about.”

“She’s who?”

“How do you know who I am?” Étienne’s sister asked, eyeing the knife in the bushes. I stepped in front of the weapon to conceal it from view.

“Étienne told me about you,” I said. “In the Bastille. He said you were there in the street with him the night the coachman was murdered. Wait! You were there. You saw what happened. You can tell everyone he didn’t do it!”

She lowered her eyes, drawing circles in the dirt with her finger. “I can’t.”

“What do you mean you can’t?” Renée asked.

Heat rushed through me, and my fingers clenched of their own volition. “Renée,” I said. “Hit her in the head with a rock. Perhaps that will jog her memory.”

“I’m not going to hit her in the head with a rock, Olivier.”

“Lightly. Hit her in the head with a rock lightly.”

Étienne’s sister jumped up, lifted her foot, and kicked at the back of my knee. I lost my balance and crashed into the rose bushes. For a moment, it looked as if roses were pouring from the sky—red and pink and white petals enveloping my vision from every direction. When the petals settled and my head quit spinning, Étienne’s sister had Renée by her middle, the knife—retrieved from under the bush—held up to her throat.

“Stop!” I yelled. “I won’t hit you with a rock. I promise. Just please don’t hurt Renée.”

“If you swear to never tell anyone you saw me here,” she responded, “I’ll let your sister go.”

I tried to rise and get my legs working again so I could wrestle the knife from her grasp. But I couldn’t move. My legs had turned to custard, my heart beating out a rhythm of erratic flutters. I didn’t wish to admit it to myself, but I was scared. For Renée and Étienne and the knowledge that this was all turning into more of a mess than I could have ever imagined.

“We aren’t going to hurt you or tell anyone you’re here,” Renée said, looking remarkably composed for someone with a knife to her throat. “Étienne is our brother, too, and we are as worried about him as you are.”

“More!” I called out from the bushes. “We are probably more worried!”

Renée shot me a glare, but continued. “All we wish to know is what happened so we can have him released from the Bastille. If you tell us, you’ll be helping him as well.”

Our assailant faltered, her grasp on the knife slipping. “How was he caught?”

“He was seen running through the streets with a dagger,” I said, lifting myself from the bushes. “If he stays in the Bastille, he’ll be killed. Do you understand? He confessed to the murder, and he’s been sentenced to death.”

A few seconds passed where no one said a word, and then Étienne’s sister dropped the knife. She lowered herself to the ground, burying her head in her hands as she whispered, “He didn’t tell you anything because he’s trying to protect me.”

“Protect you from what?” Renée asked.

“The reason no one can know I’m here is because I’m in hiding.”

Renée and I exchanged a glance, but neither of us responded.

Étienne’s sister continued. “And I’m in hiding because—” She sucked in a shaky breath. “Because Étienne didn’t kill the coachman. I did.”