Poison Priestess by Lana Popovic (some good books to read TXT) 📗

CHAPTER SEVEN

The Contract and the Hôtel

I barely manage to snatch a tattered scrap of sleep that night.

Turmoil roils just beneath my eyelids in a muddy swirl. I thrash from side to side like an animal in a trap as I consider what future path might suit me best. Though under the proposed arrangement I would be indebted to the marquise for twelve thousand livres, I would also have my own residence for the first time in my life. Yes, she will not pay me anything more until I have earned back the sum advanced; we have agreed to set the worth of each scrying session at thirty livres. But I’ve no doubt that once she introduces the glittering novelty of her sorceress to friends at court, I would soon secure a stream of additional income to stash away for myself.

But becoming the marquise’s sorceress would mean bidding farewell to Marie, and losing our nights together in the haven of the cité. The dark sun of a world that we have made into our own domain.

Yet if I were to do as Marie urges, how could I live with abandoning Antoine in his hour of need? Feckless though he can be, he has also shown me so much kindness. Without him I might never have left the fabrique, or left it for somewhere incalculably worse. Without him, I would never even have learned to read, and Agnesot’s grimoire might have remained forever locked to me.

After everything he’s done for me, could I truly give up this chance to rescue him in kind?

By morning, I’ve yet to come to terms with myself. Sensing my disquiet, the marquise leaves me to my pensive silence after collecting me in her carriage, a lavish cream-and-gold affair drawn by two splendid snowy geldings. But when we reach the Villeneuve, a refined suburb outside the city walls, the residence she has chosen stuns me out of my introspection, replacing it with a pure, wonder-struck awe.

“This is the place?” I exhale, nearly pressing my nose against the carriage window like an overeager child. “Marquise, surely not.”

“Just wait until you see inside,” she replies, tipping me a wink.

It is a proper hôtel particulier on the Rue Beauregard, a graceful stone townhouse claiming an entire block and presiding over a pristine garden, encircled by a wrought-iron fence topped with spearhead finials. I can barely keep from gaping as the footmen help us from the carriage, escorting us to the gleaming double doors.

“You like it, then,” the marquise remarks as my eyes rove hungrily all around. “I thought you might.”

“How could I not?” I breathe as we cross into the soaring foyer, our heels clicking on the crimson-veined marble floor. The walls are paneled in mahogany and hung with gilt-framed Pouissins, Le Bruns, and Lorrains, so beautiful and egregiously expensive I can imagine Antoine quaking at the very sight of them. “It is astonishing!”

“Astonishingly befitting of my new devineresse-entitre, you mean,” she corrects playfully, looping her arm through mine and patting my hand. “Come, meet your staff—if you will have them, that is.”

In the great hall, she’s had the house’s score of servants arrange themselves in two rows for us to pass between. The chatelaine dips into a curtsy at the sight of us, the rest of the staff crisply following suit, bobbing their pert heads. Even their uniforms are cut so well, embroidered with the silver and blue of the House of Montespan, that the servants themselves seem intended as adornments to the hôtel. I cannot quite wrap my mind around such a multitude of help when I’ve only ever had Suzette and considered myself fortunate.

From there we take the swooping double staircase upstairs, my fingers trailing over the rosewood banister’s silken finish.

“Is this your property?” I ask the marquise as she leads me from room to spectacular room, all carpeted with sumptuous mulberry rugs and hung with chandeliers intricate as tiny airborne palaces. Even the wallpaper captivates me, cut velvet worked with an arabesque of bees and roses.

Mine, mine, mine, my heart clamors. All this could be mine.

“It’s so lovely,” I continue. “I cannot imagine why you would not live here yourself.”

“Oh, no,” she replies with a tinkling laugh. “This is not at all to my taste. It was one of my husband’s properties, signed to me as part of my wedding gift. But I’ve never lived in it myself—nor do I plan to, now that I am ensconced in the maîtresse-en-titre’s suite at Versailles. So you may as well enjoy it for the both of us, for so long as you serve as my divineress. Think of it as a symbol of the agreement between us—a guarantee that your services will belong primarily to me, until you earn back your debt.”

I am not such a fool that I cannot imagine how easily she could whisk the ground out from beneath me, should I displease her in some way. But once I have established myself, found steady purchase with others at court, I can always renegotiate the terms. Perhaps, eventually, even buy this fairy tale of a house outright and snip myself free of her puppetmaster’s strings.

My heart rises at the thought of such an independence, fluttering beneath my throat like a dove trapped inside a belfry. To be the mistress of my own homestead, the only Fate in charge of spinning out the fabric of my life.

Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos all merged into one.

The sole weaver of my own destiny.

“But you will not attempt to influence how I ply my trade here otherwise?” I press. “As long as we agree that your needs will always be seen to first, in service to your loan?”

“Of course I would not presume to infringe upon your freedom, Madame Monvoisin. When I do not require your sight, you would be free to work your talents as you see fit, and to be compensated as per your arrangements with others.”

She smiles enticingly at me, lifting her eyebrows in invitation. “Now, shall I