The marten tickled her nose with its tail. Haidée sneezed and groaned before rolling over in bed and pulling up a pillow to cover her head. The creature squeaked and ran up and down the bed. The trampling paws along her body felt like she had bumped into an open silverware drawer and that all the spoons were falling on her. Her head ached like the very devil.
“I’m trying to sleep!” Her voice came out muffled. It sounded more like she was making frustrated noises behind a closed mouth.
The marten pounced again.
The previous night, after a dull and solemn dinner in which the astronomers avoided the topic of the recent death and discussed their research projects instead, Haidée had escaped back into her room to douse herself in tonic. She had had enough of “astrolabe calibrations”, “telescope adjustments”, and speculations on the weather and clear skies for the night. The tonic had given her an extra boost of mental awareness and she had stayed up working on translating the symbols on the telescope cards. She had mostly translated the first one that she had found before she had glanced up at the clock on the shelf and noticed that it was four in the morning.
She had also felt restless. And in more than one instance, she had found her gaze moving towards the small door that led to the shared bathroom.
“Fine, I’m up,” she mumbled. Haidée rolled ungraciously out of bed and rubbed her eyes while trying to peer at the clock on the bookshelf. It was seven in the morning. She uttered a colorful epithet before saying to the marten, “This is a ridiculous time to be up. I’ve only had about three hours of sleep.”
Once seeing that she was on her feet, the animal scrambled across the room and began scratching at the main door.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, if you’re hungry, you’re just going to have to wait. I’m not going down there in my nightgown.”
The marten whined.
“Fine. You go down there on your own. But don’t come crying to me when Madame Boulanger whacks off your tail.” She made her way toward the door and opened it a crack. The animal scurried out without even a backward glance. “Ungrateful minx.” She slammed the door shut and leaned on it, feeling a little woozy.
Eventually, she turned back to the rest of her room. With the marten out of the way, she could go back to sleep. And if she did, she was sure she would sleep until the middle of the afternoon. But something tugged at the back of her brain. There was something that she had to do this morning even though she couldn’t quite remember what. So sleeping would be out of the question.
She went to her trunk and pulled out a fresh bottle of tonic. She uncorked it and poured a little into a glass goblet sitting on the stand next to her bed. Once she set the bottle back down, she took the glass and downed the liquid without any fanfare. It tasted slightly sweet and sticky and she wanted to vomit. But she made herself walk to the bathroom and unlock the door.
Her brain was suddenly jolted awake by the figure standing next to the bathroom table facing a mirror. The figure turned and she had to fight the urge to giggle.
“Why is it that whenever we have an encounter, I have to ask what you are doing?” Renaud had on a pair of breeches but otherwise his feet and chest were bare. His long dark hair was slightly mused—a particularly errant lock was sticking out in a strange angle. His face was lathered with soap. In one hand, he held a razor. In the other, a towel.
“I wanted to perform my morning toilette, obviously,” she responded. “But since you’re here, I’ll wait.”
“I’m almost done anyway,” he replied as she was about to turn back. “There’s plenty of room to share.”
She paused. “It doesn’t seem quite right to me. This is a mistake. Only lovers would take the liberty of sharing the morning ritual.”
“But we are going to become lovers, aren’t we?”
She narrowed her gaze as he turned his back to her to resume shaving. She wanted to ask him why he didn’t visit her last night. But she refrained from saying so aloud. Instead, she retorted, “I think you’re assuming a little too much.”
There was only a slight pause in his motions when he heard her words. “Maybe so. What do you think?”
“I think this shared room is a bad idea. No one is completely safe in their own rooms if another has the key to it.”
“That’s true. But one should be relatively safe if you trust the other person with whom one is sharing the bathroom.”
“Maybe.” A thought lurched into her consciousness only to slide away again. She tried to make a grab for it and managed to catch a fragment of it. “The fireplace?” she said mostly to herself, puzzled.
“Hm?” He looked at her from the mirror. “Are you cold?”
She waved a hand in dismissal. “No.” She approached the other end of the table from where he was shaving. She took hold of a pitcher and poured water into a porcelain bowl. “I was thinking that the obvious doors may not be the only entrances into a room. There could be trap doors.” She thought of the attic room that she had explored earlier. “Just like trap doors on a theatre stage.”
“That’s possible.”
She cupped her hands in the water and began washing her face. When she finally reached for one of the towels piled beside the bottles of lotions, she noticed that he had finished shaving. He was watching her. She responded by averting her gaze and drying her face. She spoke into the towel. “Yes, I know I look terrible in the morning.”
“Your hair is a mess and you do have circles under your eyes,” he replied. “But I think I prefer it to the wig and the white powder you usually paint onto your face.”
She lowered her towel. “You are really strange.”
“Actually, no. Perhaps all the men you knew before were strange ones. Perhaps they preferred the actress rather than the woman.”
She felt a flush creep up her face, but she managed to ignore his remark in her response. “I want to examine Legard’s room.”
“Why would you want to do that?”
“There’s something not right about what I saw that night. You don’t suppose I could prevail upon you to ask Monsieur Everard for the key?”
“He would be suspicious if I asked,” Renaud replied. “Right now, he has managed to hush up the two deaths quite well. There will be the funeral of D’Aubigne in a few hours and the magistrate doesn’t seem to have any problem with it.”