Haidée found herself agreeing with him as he steered her toward the stone wall. “I have this awful headache. I should go back and take some tonic. I’ll feel better then.”
She felt his fingers tighten on her arm. “Did you take any of your tonic this morning?”
“Why yes. I wasn’t feeling too well then either so I took two doses…”
“That’s what’s wrong with you.”
At the wall, she leaned against it and put an arm on the edge to steady herself. “What?”
“I think these tonics of yours are causing you headaches. Exerting yourself and taking drugs is a dangerous combination.”
“I don’t know…”
“Yes it is. You should stop drinking that stuff whenever you feel bad. There’s no need to handicap yourself unnecessarily.”
She turned to look at the scenery—everywhere but him. “Maybe I want to handicap myself.”
“Haidée, you can’t deny your powers. I saw you defend yourself. You made those spells yourself. I had to have mine made for me. Not many women can do that.”
“You called me a witch.”
The word hung between them, shimmering and dangerous. Society said that there were no such things, only charlatans. No one would be so barbaric these days to burn someone at the stake. But who could say if someone made up some charges like treason or conspiracy against the government—and whether it was true or not, use it as a reason to send the condemned to the kiss of the guillotine?
“If you aren’t,” he replied mildly, “Then what are you?”
He stood close to her, giving no indication that he was going away any time soon. He didn’t look disgusted with her, simply curious as if he had asked an innocuous question instead—as if he had asked her if she liked sugar and milk in her tea.
She felt herself deflate. “I’m a person, that’s all. An ordinary person who just has these…abilities.”
He looked at her, not saying anything. This unnerved her.
“You don’t believe me.”
“I had an inkling of what you might have been capable of back when the carriage taking us to this island was stuck on the causeway,” Renaud finally said. “You mentioned that something was strange with the mud. Ducos and I managed to get the wheels unstuck, but I wondered if we didn’t have a little help. It seemed a little too easy after we had put in so much effort.”
“Big, strong men don’t need help,” she sneered.
“I usually don’t turn away help if it is offered at a critical juncture.” He raised a hand to brush a lock of her hair, which had escaped from underneath her bonnet, behind her ear. The warm skin of his fingers barely touched the curve of her cheek. “You could have said how you could have helped.”
“Some people don’t accept such things,” Haidée replied, thinking back on her conversation with Father DeLorme. “Some think it is merely hallucination.”
“I don’t.” He straightened up and suddenly there was this space between them as if they were both now merely distant acquaintances. But the barest indication of a smile on his lips hinted that something had changed between them. Haidée hesitated to speculate on what that might be.
Instead, she strove for a light impersonal tone as if they had been merely taking a walk outside instead of battling each other with certain powers. “So you say that someone killed the astronomer who everyone says is a suicide. Why do you say that?”
“Danton Neville corresponded with a patron of his who is a member of the Five Hundred.”
“The Directoire?” The Five Hundred was the Lower House of the French government. Haidée was confused. “What do they have anything to do with this? I thought you were the one who had the correspondence with Monsieur Neville.”
“I work for Neville’s patron.”
She stared at him stunned as the implications of his statement struck her. “You’re an agent, not an astronomer. How did you convince Monsieur Everard you were one? Wait, you’re not actually Jacot Renaud, are you? It’s just an assumed name. You’re an actor!”
He seemed amused by her outburst. “My real name is Jacot Renaud. I did not lie about that. I am not an expert, but I know enough of astronomy that I have helped my superiors interpret the results from the observatory. Everard only knows what my superiors have told him—that I am an astronomer working in Paris.”
“And so you are here because Monsieur Neville’s patron wanted to know what was going on here?” she deduced.
“Neville’s last letter disturbed him to say the least. Some of his letter talked about the death of another astronomer several months prior. He seemed to be convinced that he did not die of natural causes.”
“Do you mean Nicolas Bisset?”
“Yes. How did you hear about him?”
“I found something in my room with his name on it. I asked Monsieur Davenport about it and he told me that he had been an elderly astronomer who had died of old age. I think my guest room used to be his room.”
“And my room used to be Neville’s room,” said Renaud. “How strange.”
“It can’t be a coincidence.” She paused for a moment, thinking about how much she should tell him. “I saw you in this area a couple of days ago. You were examining that place where Monsieur Neville supposedly jumped to his death.”
“Oh? You were spying on me?” His voice had gotten soft. “Were you following me?”
She shook her head. “It was an accident, I swear. But I am curious. What did you find?”
Renaud shrugged. “I didn’t really find anything. Originally, I had the suspicion that perhaps Neville had found out too much and someone had simply tossed him over the cliffs for retaliation. I didn’t think anything else was involved until Legard turned up dead. That was when I had the bright idea of taking some samples of the place. I know an alchemist just outside of Paris who has ways of determining if certain powers have been used in a particular location even after the spell had been cast quite a while ago.”
“I’ve heard of such alchemists,” Haidée admitted. “They are quite specialized. I can only tell if a spell is being used at the time. Occasionally, I can also tell if it has just been cast. But not days afterward.”