His brother was soon back and pushed a plate of meat, a rind of cheese, and a heel of bread into his hands.
Guy was hungry, but he pushed it away. “I won’t eat until you tell me.”
“It is nothing to me whether you eat or not,” Vincent said. “It will not matter in the end.”
Guy felt the chill of those words. “What do you intend to do with me?”
“I’ll explain later. While you eat, I’ll tell you what happened the night of the fire.”
Guy reluctantly picked up the plate. He broke off a bit of the bread and chewed. “Go on.”
“I had crept downstairs to the kitchen to eat some leftover tart. When the crowd began to ransack the chateau, I was frightened. I tried to reach Papa and Maman’s bedchamber, but the flames licked at the servants’ stairs and blocked my way to the corridor leading to the family quarters. A servant rescued me as the house fell in flames around me. He carried me away half comatose for I had inhaled a lot of smoke. It was some days before I recovered. He cared for me and adopted me as his own. I was desolated when he told me my family had left France. You left me! Aristos were being rounded up and taken by tumbril to the guillotine. If I’d been found, that would have been my fate, too.”
“We did not leave France for days, because Papa held out hope that you lived. Who was this servant?”
“Papa’s chef. Remember Pierre Valois?”
Guy vaguely remembered a short, rotund man who gave him food when he was hungry. “Why did he not return you to us?”
“By the time it was safe to go back, you had abandoned me, and we knew not where you’d gone.”
“We did not abandon you! The whole of our quartier was in flames. We believed you dead and still waited far too long. We barely escaped with our lives. Papa paid someone to continue to look for you, but he sent us word that he’d had no luck. Did Pierre take you away from Paris?”
Vincent nodded. “We lived in Calais. Pierre opened a restaurant there. That’s where I grew up.”
“You never tried to find us?”
“No. What was the point? You’d left the country. There was no way of returning to France duringThe Terror. And in the end, I didn’t want to. I suppose my adopted parent’s hatred of aristos rubbed off on me.”
“Pierre was treated well. All Papa’s servants were.”
Vincent shrugged. “I do not remember. It’s likely you don’t either.”
“Please understand. We would’ve died, too, had we stayed. There was Genevieve to consider and Maman was not well.”
Vincent shook his head. He backed away, still pointing the gun at Guy. “Time to move.”
Guy thrust the plate onto the table and lurched to his feet, his head still aching. “I am telling you the truth, Vincent. Why are you threatening me with that pistol? Put it away!”
Vincent gestured toward the door. “Back to the storeroom.”
“And if I refuse?”
“I will shoot you. Don’t doubt I mean it, Guy.”
Guy searched his brother’s fevered eyes. He did mean it. He had hired men to do precisely that. Vincent had lost his reason. But why was he still alive? He was glad to have time to appeal to his brother. Sure that Vincent could be talked around. Blood was thicker than water, wasn’t it? Fear that he may not succeed, made his stomach roil as he stumbled back into the suffocating space. He would go mad, too, if he stayed there too long. “Why are you doing this?” he asked trying to delay. “Why did you send men to kill me?”
He was pushed through the doorway. The door slammed shut in his face, leaving him in the dark. “Tomorrow,” came the muffled reply.
The next day, Vincent came for him again. “Will you at least tell me the reason for this?”
Guy’s gesture encompassed the room, the table and chairs, and the pistol in Vincent’s hand. He’d spent a sleepless night shivering in the freezing dark trying to understand it. To think of a way out of it, but he couldn’t see past the fact that his brother was alive. It should have brought him joy, but for the fact that Vincent planned to kill him. Guy stiffened his resolve and decided to take his chances as they came, whatever the outcome.
“You owe me, Guy.”
Guy shook his head, confused. “You do not need to do this, Vincent.”
“But I do. I’m ready to become Baron Fortescue. I paid for that right.”
