My husband cowers in one of the room’s newly empty corners, barely able to meet my eyes.
“It is somewhat worse than I feared,” he admits, giving a helpless shrug. Revulsion at his weakness burns like nettles in my throat. “Last week the duc withdrew his order, which would have gone a ways toward restoring our means. And without his commission I was stalled, unable to procure the raw material for the vicomtesse’s necklace.”
“How bad is it, Antoine?” I can barely bring myself to ask. “How much do we owe?”
“Well, as to the exact amount, it isn’t, ah, as clear as that,” he fumbles, mopping at his brow with a frilly handker-chief. Of the very finest linen, no doubt, I think venomously. Yet another frivolous expenditure that has paved our path to here. “I would have to revisit the ledgers, take the interest into account, and then there is the matter of the lateness penalty—”
“How much, Antoine?” I shriek at him like a fishwife, my hands balled into fists, nails slicing into my palms with a sharp sear of pain. “Just tell me how bad it is!”
He closes his eyes. “Well over twelve thousand livres,” he whispers, biting down on the inside of his cheek. “I … I’m sorry, Catherine.”
Twelve thousand livres, I repeat silently to myself, mouthing the words with numb lips. A staggering sum, a pit so deep it may as well tunnel all the way down to l’enfer. The contents of my strongbox could not even begin to fill it.
“So we have nothing.” I close my eyes against a hot well of tears, my heart threatening to trample my ribs. “Less than nothing, soon. What next, Antoine? Will we … Will we lose the house as well?”
“I don’t know,” he replies, raking a hand through his rumpled hair, no longer even bothering to conceal his despair. “I’ve friends I might approach for a loan. Or I could see if I might transfer our debts to another moneylender.”
One of the louts overhears us and pauses in his pillaging, hefting a rug more comfortably across his bulging shoulders. His eyes trawl over me speculatively, lingering on my curls and the curve of my hips.
“It needn’t be as dismal as all that, you know,” he remarks to Antoine, jutting his coarse chin at me. “Not while you still have her to sell. I’d wager she’d fetch a pretty penny for you, mon frère.”
The breath dies in my lungs. I go cold all at once, as if the blood in my veins has chilled into a slush. Not because I cannot fathom what this jackal means, but because I can, and with terrible ease. At the fabrique, the maître ran a lively trade in women’s bodies as a secondary business. While I was fortunate enough to be sold into marriage rather than a brothel, there is no guarantee that my former luck will hold.
While Antoine does not yet view me as chattel, how can I be sure that he will not change his mind?
“I am not your brother, you buffoon,” my husband rails at the man, who gives a nonplussed shrug and carries on with his deplorable business. “How dare you imply something so tawdry and foul, as if I am some whoremaster? As if I would ever even think to barter away my own wife!”
“No need to fall into a fit about it, eh?” the man tosses over his shoulder on his way out. “I was only saying. So’s you’d know that you have options.”
Antoine continues sputtering in outrage at the man’s retreating back, even as he vanishes through the door with our rug in tow.
“Catherine!” he cries, ashen-faced and beseeching as he turns to me. “You know, you must know that I would never …”
He trails away as I retrieve my basket and climb wordlessly up the stairs. I have nothing to say to him. Because while I would love to believe my husband, I know no such thing for certain.
And if I am to claw my way out of this, I will need to gamble even more boldly on myself.
CHAPTER SIX
The Prayer and the Proposal
That night, as I brew the philter for the Marquise de Montespan, I do something to which I am quite unaccustomed.
I pray.
Feverishly, above hands clasped so hard it bleaches my knuckles white. To whom, I am not certain. Whatever dark deities preside over Agnesot’s grimoire, perhaps. Or maybe to no gods at all, but something altogether else; fallen angels burning darkly, or the prancing denizens of hell. The demons who were once my solace in the fabrique, when I comforted myself by imagining becoming one of them.
Though I doubt that any of them bother to listen, I cannot help but try. Because this philter is no longer just a potion but my hope distilled into liquid form.
A symbol of the only salvation I can imagine for myself.
Over a fortnight spins by before I hear from the marquise again.
I sit at the Pomme with Marie, drowning my woes in wine after a disappointingly thin night at the havens. Too much drink has made me a touch maudlin, treading closer to despair than I usually allow myself.
“Should worse come to worst and Antoine loses the house, you can come live with me, Cat,” Marie says to me, her voice pitched low beneath the tavern’s raucous hubbub, her warm hand resting on my shoulder. “It’s true I practically share my tiny garret roost with the pigeons. But there is always room for you, and coin enough.”
“If Antoine does not yet sell me to cover his debts,” I respond darkly, taking another swallow. “Though I do not truly think he—”
I cut myself off as a cloaked figure whisks out the third chair at our table and takes a seat with us. Marie and I exchange
