And what am I to do, I think despairingly as I look into his eyes, if you step over the precipice and lead us both into ruin because you cannot help yourself ?
Because I know, as surely as I know that I owe my life to Agnesot, that it is I who will pay for my husband’s folly, as has every wastrel’s wife that came before me.
Then I remember the weight of the little coin bag Marie slipped into my purse the night before—payment for my session with the nameless lady, which Marie insisted that I keep for having done all the work. With that thought, the frantic gallop of my heart subsides a little in my chest.
Perhaps there is another way I might yet begin protecting myself.
The next night, I fashion myself into a proper fortune-teller.
Asking Marie to let me read for another of her new clients is even simpler than I had hoped. She is amused by how a single taste has whetted my appetite for selling prophecy, and though I fear that I may be encroaching on her territory, she assures me that she has amassed a reliable enough clientele that ceding one more newcomer to me will hardly affect her livelihood.
But if I am to make my own livelihood of this, I know it will take much more than just the sight. If life has taught me anything, it is that folk with means yearn to feel as though they have taken some clever advantage. Spent their coin uncommonly well in comparison to their less-savvy peers.
So I must learn to sell myself, to wear mysticism like an alluring second skin. To present the face of a true divineress.
When Marie’s gentleman client meets me at the haven, I know just what illusion I have conjured up for him. I’ve draped a black lace veil over my curls, allowing only the stubbornest of ringlets to spring free by my temples. Thick kohl lines my eyes, and a much darker shade of carmine than is stylish stains my lips. I keep my face both taut and expressionless, teeming with possibility as I reach confidently for his hand. As though I am some oracle he has sought out on a mountaintop, poised on the breathless brink of revelation. Lovely and untouchable as she is secretive.
“And who might you be, mademoiselle?” His lips purse petulantly even as he allows me to take his hand. I asked Marie to make herself scarce while I read for him, though I know she watches from the shadows, ready to swoop in should I require her help. And there is also burly Alexandre to call upon, the rough who ensures that the haven’s hush remains unbroken by customers displeased by their purchased prophecies. “I thought it was to be Mademoiselle Bosse who—”
“Mademoiselle Bosse is, alas, indisposed tonight,” I interrupt, keeping my voice soft but unassailable, leaving no room for contradiction. “But I am her trusted colleague, Madame Catherine Monvoisin. Should you be unhappy with my services, Mademoiselle Bosse will read for you for free once she has recovered. But I assure you, messire, I am every bit her equal. You will not require a second reading once you have heard mine.”
He blinks at my assertive tone, taken aback—exactly as I want. I mean to unsettle this man, set him back on his heels and tantalize him all at once.
I mean to make him remember me.
“I suppose that will do, for now,” he allows, his smooth hand relaxing in my grip. An arrogant languor overtakes his patrician face even as his eyes spark with anticipation. Though he has offered her only an alias, Marie believes him so highborn that he may even have grown up in Versailles’s gilded halls. Cosseted enough, at any rate, to render him mostly intrigued rather than alarmed by unexpected novelties.
And why should he not be intrigued, I think a trifle bitterly, when life has offered him nothing but pleasantness and opportunities?
Yet some real need boils in him, seething just beneath his pampered surface like a sulfurous spring. I can feel it tugging at me even before I properly begin. I have barely bent my head over his palm, following the furrows of his lines, when my nape starts to knell, tolling like a rung bell with the rising of the sight.
“Ever since you were old enough to know it, your father has favored your half brother,” I begin, speaking the vision aloud for him even as it unfolds behind my eyes. “The silver-tongued son of your father’s second wife. Though you are his better in every aspect, from riding to falconry to the keeping of the estate’s books, it seems nothing can unseat him in your father’s fond regard. And with every passing year he burrows deeper under your skin, lodged like a stubborn thorn festering in your side.”
I can hear the breath snag in his throat, bright shock flaring in his eyes. He clearly expected his fortune told in broader strokes, was unprepared for such a specific truth.
“It is … Yes!” the lord exclaims. “That is Bernard, pardieu, that is him precisely! Go on, girl, what else do you see?”
Though it galls me to hear this uppity nobleman call me “girl,” I set it to the side.
“You thought you had time to prove yourself his better,” I continue, tracing my fingers over his palm in ornate designs. “But now your father lingers on his deathbed, and your brother does not leave his side, whispering sweetened venom in the old man’s ear. Angling to steal the estate out from under you—along with your sire’s title, if he can manage it.”
The lord breathes raggedly, a savage fury twisting his handsome face.
“So he is plotting to usurp my inheritance, the weaseling blackguard,” he growls through clenched teeth. “Well, he and his grasping chit of a mother cannot have
