Ben
29. Barred
Ben
30. The Truth
Ben
31. Freedom
Ben
32. The Cemetery
Ben
33. Answers
Ben
34. Arnaud & Hugo
Remi
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Thank You for Reading
Discover More
PROLOGUE
She never thought love would be her demise.
Matters of the heart had never been her strong suit, but her father assured her she would make a lovely wife for any young man. She felt the opposite. Her suitors were few and far between, and the only boy she ever spent time with was her younger brother.
“You don’t need anyone else,” her brother would say. “You can stay with Father and me. We’ll take care of you.”
But it wasn’t enough. She wanted what the other young ladies in town had, and when she saw them strolling with their beaus, it made the yearning worse. Perhaps it was the reason why she grew so desperate, why she set her eyes on him. It was that first glance at the door, with his pretty bouquet and bright gifts, that caught her like a fly in the spider’s web.
Willingly, of course.
For days, he would go away on business, and a letter would arrive. It would spell out his yearning, his heartache, his need for her. But there was always a stipulation, a hint that he was bound to another, that he could not escape without money for the both of them to leave together.
If only I was not bound by a life here. I would have made you into my queen. A jewel in my crown, one letter read.
In another, he would lament, I am miserable, my darling. Sitting in the dark, thinking of your lips and your skin. How much longer until I see you again?
In most? He would rage.
It was a pleasure to be present when all three letters made up the man she loved.
In the heat of their affair, coiled like ravenous snakes around one another, they fed into the other’s desires by night. She who wanted love, and he who wanted everything she could give him, her desperation bending her easily into his will. Until she wanted his daylight.
“I can’t.”
“Please,” she begged. “Take me with you to Paris. Just once.”
But his decision held firm. Then he would be off again, leaving her destroyed and determined not to let him back into her heart. But the letters would resume, pulling her back into his web.
Romantic words became honeyed apologies, promises of what would never be. She stored those thoughts away in some secret part of her heart, convincing herself that he would follow through someday, that he only needed money. But her fear sent her spiraling into madness. Time away from the manor, away from her, became agonizing loneliness.
So she told him she would find her family’s treasure.
His eyes lit up. “Find it, and I will whisk you away to Paris forever.”
And she believed him.
But there was no family treasure, no rumored gold—it was just a story. There was only her father and his growing suspicion. His scrutinizing stare as his daughter, once so bright and full of life, wasted away with frantic apprehension.
Then, one morning, she overslept and missed the post.
Her father’s fury filled the household.
