Page 78 of Taken by the Rake (The Scarlet Chronicle 3)

She looked down and then must have realized her state of dishabille because her cheeks colored. “I would like some privacy to dress.” She gathered her clothing and slipped behind the privacy screen.

“Of course.” He rose awkwardly and left her to dress. Rather than think of her righting her clothing or pulling stockings over those shapely legs, he cut bread from the depleted loaf and sliced an apple. She had bought a bit of tea—curse the British and their tea—and he steeped it and wished for coffee.

Finally, she emerged, looking far too lovely in a slightly wrinkled pale blue muslin dress with a white sash. She’d pulled her dark hair into a tail and secured it with a tattered ribbon, tendrils of it falling down to frame her face. He doubted she knew what a fetching picture she made. She had dressed quickly and probably without too much thought.

“Oh!” she said when she saw the bread and apple on the plate at the table. Laurent had taken up his position at the window overlooking the Temple.

“You needn’t have prepared a meal for me,” she said.

“You aren’t hungry?” He looked away from her and forced himself to make a note on the sheaf of paper before him. The guards had changed. He had been too preoccupied to observe it himself, but he had no reason not to assume they had changed at the same time as yesterday.

“I am hungry.” She sat across from him. “I should have said thank you.” She pulled the drawing he had made of the Temple interior before her and studied it.

He’d added to it again last night as he’d remembered more.

“You must have spent a great deal of time with the Comte d’Artois in the Tower to be able to draw such detailed maps of it,” she said.

“We would go and explore it from time to time,” he admitted, stiffening. “But Charles Phillipe lived in the palace section of the Temple complex, not the Tower.”

“Then how do you know the Tower so well?”

He might as well tell her. He’d lived his entire life under the shadow his father had created. She would likely judge him less harshly than most. “My father was imprisoned there for some months when I was a child.”

“Your father?” Her head snapped up, her eyes wide with shock.

“He opposed Louis XV’s policies in the Seven Years’ War and gave financial aid to the enemy. It was not much, but it was enough for rouse the king’s anger. He sent my father to the Tower, and I visited him there with mymamanand my sister Amélie almost daily. Finally, the king forgave him and released him. But it was too late.”

She furrowed her brow. “How so?”

“My sister and I played there, running and hiding, and once when we were playing she stepped on a piece of rusty metal. That is how she became ill and died.”

Honoria’s breath seemed to whoosh out of her as she finally understood that his sister had died from exposure to the Temple, the very place the children he’d come to love were imprisoned.

“My father was released, but my family was never the same. My parents tried to pretend they were still happy and carefree, but Amélie had been their firstborn and captured their hearts. Nothing was ever the same after she died.”

“And you did everything you could to make sure the royal children didn’t have to suffer a similar tragedy.”

“Futile effort. I must take Madame Royale and the dauphin away from that place. It is not fit for children. I went back later, when I was older and Charles Phillipe and I could joke about the filth and the rats, but I never forgot the terror I felt when I first walked into the prison and felt completely cut off from the light of the outside world. It has always felt like a tomb to me—Amélie’s tomb.”

She reached across and put a hand on his forearm. “We will free them, Laurent.”

He nodded. He had no other choice.

One more day of watching and he would be ready to put his plan into motion. But what he really wanted was to see Madame Royale for himself. If he could but see her, know she was alive, then he could be assured that he risked his life and that of any others who helped him for good reason.

“Do you think Ffoulkes will send Dewhurst for an update today?” he asked.

She shook her head. “He will give it another day, I think. He will want us to gather as much information as possible before we make a plan.”

“I already have a plan,” he said. Her head snapped up.

“What do you mean? We cannot go in alone. Not today.”

“No. It’s a rough plan, and I will refine it as I watch today.”

“And then?”

“And then if the League has not come to us, we go to them. I promise you once I see the princess, I will not want to wait long to act.”

---