The Consequences of Champagne and Murder

Chapter Thirteen - Thus Continues the Worst Day Ever

I fell asleep on the way home. I didn’t mean to—there were a million questions I needed answered, a million possible scenarios I could have thought up before we visited the king the next day. But everything from the night caught up with me all at once, and I passed out in our rented carriage the second we began to move. 

Though it was but a ten-minute ride from the Palais-Royal to my home in Le Marais, my sleep was deep and dreamless, exhaustion pulling me under like boulders thrown into the sea. When Jacqueline woke me with a kick to the shin, my head was saturated with slumber, and it took a moment for me to crawl my way to consciousness. But the second I opened my eyes, the panic returned.

The king had invited us to visit him at Versailles the next day. I’d narrowly avoided death by a group of pistol-wielding bastards. Tomorrow would be the last chance I had to keep my brother from dying. 

When we arrived home and crossed under the stone entryway into the cour d’honneur, the windows were dark as night. Which meant Mother and Father had already returned and gone to sleep without caring if Renée and I were safe. Not that I expected anything less of my parents.

“Well,” I said after the coachman helped Jacqueline, Renée, and me out of the carriage, “I suppose I should try to get in a few hours of sleep before the king ruins my life further. Good night.” I started for the front door, but only made it a few steps before Jacqueline flicked the back of my neck. 

“Are you not going to tell them?” she asked. 

I turned to face her, vaguely noting the smudges of sleeplessness under her eyes. “Tell who what?” 

“Your parents. Are you not going to tell them Étienne’s hanging has been moved to the end of this week?” 

Hearing my brother’s fate discussed aloud sent a fresh wave of panic coursing through my veins, but all I did was scrub a hand across my cheek. Bits of dried blood flaked off on my palm. “I don’t really think they would care.” 

I resumed walking, but Jacqueline was right beside me, skirts hiked up past her ankles so she wouldn’t trip over the ripped pieces of her hemline. Renée followed close behind, covering a yawn with her gloved hand. 

“Of course they would care,” Jacqueline said. “They’re your parents.” 

Renée laughed. “You’ve never met our parents.” 

Though Jacqueline peered at my sister as if she wished to say something more, she remained silent as we approached the front door. I didn’t know why she was still here, let alone why she was trailing Renée and me like she lived here as well. I ought to have told her to return to her own home—wherever that may be—and stay there for the rest of eternity. But I didn’t. Perhaps because I felt sorry for what I had said to her at the opera. Perhaps because she still hadn’t explained anything about the clocks. Perhaps because of the way she carried herself, like her past mistakes were a crushing weight on her back. 

So, I didn’t tell her to go, and she didn’t leave, and together the three of us made our way into the house. 

Straight into the hysterical arms of my father. Who, in a cloud of tobacco and spiced perfume, wrapped his hands around mine and Renée’s wrists and dragged us into the grand salon. Mother was already there, collapsed in a heap on the striped chaise. The red velvet drapes were pulled tight over the windows, and save for two flickering candelabras on the mantle, the salon was dark, all the paintings and furniture strewn about the room blanketed in black. 

“Where have you two been?” Father asked. “Your mother and I looked everywhere for you at the opera, and when we couldn’t find you, we returned home thinking you might have left before we did, but you weren’t here, either.”