“Blast!” He could hardly show up empty-handed since the palace guards always examined his basket.
Thinking of where he could turn at that hour of the late afternoon when most of the bakeries, open since dawn, had sold their wares and shut their doors, he headed for the Palais-Royal, praying the owner of the Café de Chartres could help him.
Cursing the delay, he went up the back stairs two at a time and tried to push past the armed guard who stopped him. Raising his cloth cap, he let the man see his face. With a lift of his eyebrow, the man let him pass.
The room was empty. No Randall, no Versanne. Feeling frantic, knowing Serena had been taken because she’d helped him in the catacombs, Malcolm was ready to storm the palace with only his own arsenal of two pistols.
“Don’t be a fool,” he told himself and headed downstairs to find the restaurant’s owner.
Shortly, armed with a basket of bread and cakes, he left the café. It was a quick jaunt, only a few turns to get to the palace. Sooner than he’d thought possible, he was slipping through the back gate, waved in by the guard after inspecting his wares.
Now what?He was in the cellar, but Serena was surely two floors up in a reception room or even in the emperor’s private chamber, facing what charges, Malcolm didn’t know.
***
WITH TWO OTHER RED-headed women, both looking immensely terrified, Serena was taken across the immense esplanade behind the Louvre and through the Arc de Triomphe. They entered the Palais des Tuileries under its great square-walled dome and into one of the reception rooms in which she’d previously met with the emperor.
A butterfly seemed to take up residence in her stomach, but the presence of her Queen Anne pistol against her ankle comforted her. And knowing Malcolm was somewhere nearby helped as well. She didn’t know how she knew, she simply did.
“Only three ladies with red hair,” came Bonaparte’s voice as he entered from the next chamber wearing his customary white uniform with dark blue accents and knee-high black boots, spurs at the ready.
He didn’t look his usual amiable self, however, and Serena didn’t think he was about to offer her madeleines. They made eye contact, and for the first time, she saw something in his gaze that was both ruthless and unforgiving.
Swallowing the fear rising in her, she curtsied along with the other women.
“It’s no matter,” said a familiar voice from the corner where a man had stood unnoticed. “Your guards have found the right one.”
Monsieur Christoff stepped forward, and she sucked in a shocked breath. Then he pointed directly at her.
“She’s the one working with the traitors.”
Serena felt the blood leave her head.
“You may go,” the emperor said to the other two, who curtsied, murmured words of thanks, and scurried away quickly to their families waiting at the gates.
Her grandparents would see at once she’d been detained.Only her.
“Where are my manners?” Bonaparte asked, gesturing to the sofa.
Since her knees were knocking, she gratefully wobbled to where he indicated, and she sat. The emperor also took a seat, but he didn’t invite Monsieur Christoff to do the same.
“This man said you helped him escape from the catacombs. Is that true?”
How had she and Malcolm not noticed him?And after being saved from such a horrid fate, Christoff had repaid her with a treacherous act.How despicable!Yet it was never supposed to be his fate in the first place since he was a Bonapartist through and through.
“I was in the catacombs recently,” she said cautiously. “I was touring them.”
Monsieur Christoff snorted loudly. “You did a lot more than tour them.”
She leveled a stare at him, one she’d seen her father use. Oddly, it seemed to work, for he pursed his lips and said no more.
“Will you tell us, Mademoiselle Renault, what happened?” The emperor’s words were not unkind, yet his tone was icy.
“Yes, Your Imperial Majesty. Let me think. I was walking past the entrance when I stumbled and dropped a bottle of wine.” She explained the whole evening and how she’d ended up innocently wandering the catacombs and even holding a light while someone she didn’t know unchained prisoners. After all, she couldn’t possibly know why men were being kept down there, nor could she stop others from freeing them.
Serena told the tale without incriminating herself at all.
“As you see, I was like a leaf upon the Seine, drifting along while around me were the torrents of intrigue, none of which I, a vintner’s granddaughter, had any part of.”
