“Thirteen!” Viv blurted, speaking as herself, not Charmaine. “I could have tried. I should have.”
“You were young, tender, and terrified. You must forgive yourself.”
“I—I cannot.”I have told Tate to do the same, and yet I cannot excuse my own failure.
“Forgiveness is a gift we grant others. Often, we do ourselves the disservice of withholding it from our own soul. We are as human as the next,ma petite. Time will allow it. This I know.”
“I am not certain of that,” Viv went on, her heart pounding like a drum. She would declare to this lady, and now to all who asked, how cowardly she had been that night, never to try to save her sister. “You are right, madame, to look at me with ajaundiced eye. I am a wretch. And I do wish to make amends for what I did not do that night. I cannot bring back my sister. But it has haunted me, my other sister, and my…my Aunt Madeleine for what happened to Diane. We never knew. And so, if you do know, if you can say, would you please tell me what happened to our dear girl?”
The countess took a deep breath. “Diane made of herself a nuisance to the concierge of the prison. She was lovely, but used her wit and her tongue to bedevil him and the guards. She was often sent to a private cell in a corridor where those who caused trouble were sequestered. She was always demanding something, criticizing the guards and the concierge. The guards hated her and often tried to…influence her to stop her harassment.”
“You mean that they beat her?” Viv asked, hoping it was not true.
“They did. She usually recovered quickly, though I must tell you, over time, she was weakened by them. But one day another girl was brought in, and they were merciless with her. I don’t know who she was or what she did, but they intended to starve her to death. Your sister gave the girl her own rations. When the guards found that, they took your sister away. We never saw her ever again.”
Tears rolled down both their faces then. They sat, crying silently together.
At last, Viv recovered her voice. “I would hope—with good friends and proper guidance, madame—that I might make recompense for the wrong done my sister. So I ask you if you know any names of those guards or of the concierge.”It might be wrong of me to want revenge when I cannot take it on myself for my part in this. But still, I want this.
The lady shook her head. “No. I once knew many names, but it has been years.”
Viv pressed her handkerchief to her mouth and tried to accept that this was the end of her search.
“But I do know the name of the police who brought your sister to the prison.”
“You do?” Viv could scarcely believe it.
“Diane talked about him often. He came to see her many times. Whatever he told her of that night, she had reason to believe him when he said he was the one who had turned her in.”
“Did he tell her how that happened?”
“Only that the one he really wanted was your father. To my knowledge, Diane never breathed a word of your father’s whereabouts. The man who arrested her was furious at that.”
“Who was he? Do you know?”
The countess went white as marble. “He is a powerful man now. A man with whom few should tangle. Are you sure you wish to know?”
Viv took the woman’s hand. “I do. Please tell me.”
“He is the deputy chief of police.”
Viv could not breathe. “Vaillancourt.”
“René Vaillancourt.”
*
Viv ordered hercoachman to take her to Tate’s house. Her outrage was nothing to her grief, which was a caged beast in her chest.
She had always pushed aside thoughts of how she had failed to join Tate and Beau to rescue Diane that night, but now…now this knowledge that Diane had been so upright, and so abused, tore her in two.
Now, too, she had confirmation that the man responsible for Diane’s imprisonment was René Vaillancourt. How and why that happened, she would learn. Oh, the scullery maid could castblame. The countess could remark on it. But Viv now burned with the need to hear it all from the culprit’s lips. Somehow, she would wheedle it out of the man. She knew Tate would want to be present. Indeed, she also knew that he would be a bulwark against anything aggressive Vaillancourt might say or do. She was brave, but to have Tate with her was also prudent.
Arriving at Tate’s house, she balked when she noted the front door stood ajar.
She climbed down, but her attention went up the street, where two men scuffled in the road. One was a gendarme, and he wielded his club on the other man’s back with a blunt precision resounding in the square.
Viv hurried up the steps of Tate’s entryway. His majordom appeared at once inside, supervising two footmen who hammered nails into a large wooden crate.
