“And before you ask,” Elodie said, “Auguste had to return to the palace to inform his father about what happened. He wanted to stay, believe me. He wouldn’t leave your bedside until the physician assured him that you were going to be all right.”
My heart warmed at the thought of Auguste chasing after me, of his staying to watch over me while I slept. Without him, I would be dead. Lady Catherine would have murdered me. Just a week prior, I’d been on death’s door. The thought filled me with dull horror. I’d been perhaps minutes away from joining Maman and Papa and Lady Françoise in the afterlife. Because my stepmother tried to murder me. She poisoned me with a smile on her face and sweet words on her lips. I’d always known that she never liked me— that she maybe even hated me—but I never imagined she would want me dead.
“I am so stupid,” I said loudly, my parched throat protesting the volume.
Grabbing a glass of water off the nightstand, Elodie leaned over and helped me drink a few sips. Water dribbled down my chin and dripped onto the neckline of my nightgown, which Elodie promptly wiped up with a handkerchief. I hated this. Elodie had done so much for me already, staying and putting up with Lady Catherine’s mistreatment for my sake, and now here she was, coddling me like a child.
“Don’t say things like that,” she said as she deposited the glass back on the nightstand and returned to her perch at the edge of the bed. “Why would you even think that?”
“Because I should have known that something was wrong! We lived with the woman for a year, and in all that time, she never once showed us even an ounce of kindness. Why would she start now? I should have known something was wrong as soon as she made me tea, especially after she started apologizing. She wanted either Severine or Alexandre to marry the dauphin at any cost; I bet she’d been planning to poison me for weeks! I even overheard Severine and Alexandre arguing about it. She was worried he would propose, and when he did, Lady Catherine realized she had to get rid of me once and for all.”
“Oh, Cendrillon,” Elodie said, “it’s only obvious in hindsight. It was obvious that Lady Catherine would be angry over the dauphin’s proposal, but it is ridiculous for us to imagine she would murder you.”
I was interrupted by the door to my bedchamber flying open. Alexandre came running in, cheeks flushed and eyes wild. When her eyes found me, she burst into tears. “Cendrillon! Thank goodness you’re all right!” she cried, running up to the bed and throwing herself on top of me.
I gasped in surprise as she buried her head in my neck and continued crying, her tears soaking my nightgown. I wasn’t at full strength, so the added weight of Alexandre leaning on me emptied the air from my lungs.
“I’m so sorry! I’m so sorry! I knew what she wanted to do, but I couldn’t stop her in time. The best I could do was give the antidote to Elodie. I—”
Alexandre’s words dissolved into more sobs. I disentangled my left arm from underneath the pile of blankets and patted her back, slightly confused at this surprising turn of events.
“You don’t have to apologize, Alexandre. I’m not quite sure what happened a week ago, but I’m fairly certain you saved my life. Without that antidote, I would be dead. You did everything that you could. Thank you. Truly.” Just as I suspected, the strange vial that she and Severine were arguing about was for me, not Louis. Lady Catherine and Severine had wanted to poison me from the beginning.
By the end, I was gasping for air. Noticing my distress, Elodie took Alexandre by the shoulders and pulled her gently away.
“It’s all right. It’s all right,” she said soothingly. “Why don’t we leave Cendrillon alone for a little while so she can rest? I think she’ll be ready for visitors tomorrow.”
Alexandre nodded and rubbed her eyes as Elodie led her to the doorway. Before leaving, she spun back around. “You shouldn’t be thanking me,” she said, sniffling. “I don’t deserve it. I might have given you the antidote, but it was the first thing I ever did to stop her. I suspected she had something to do with your father’s death, but I was too scared to say anything. I should have done something.”
My eyes widened. I wasn’t sure that I’d heard Alexandre correctly. I couldn’t have heard her correctly. Elodie ushered Alexandre out the door with a few whispered words I couldn’t hear and turned back to me, a concerned expression on her face.
“Did Alexandre . . . did Alexandre just say that Lady Catherine did something to Papa?”
I didn’t even need to ask. I already knew. And the tears rolling down Elodie’s cheeks confirmed the truth of Alexandre’s words.
“Lady Catherine poisoned my father, didn’t she?”
Elodie only nodded as she returned to the bed, scrubbing furiously at her eyes. I wanted to cry too. Or maybe scream. Or hit something. My emotions were twisted up around each other like vines. I couldn’t get a handle on just one. I was feeling everything, and it was overwhelming me.
“Are you sure?”
“Nearly positive. Alexandre showed Auguste and the palace guards Catherine’s logbooks. In them, she recorded the dates and times of the meetings she had with various enchantresses to buy love potions and . . . and poisons.” Lady Catherine was always meticulous about expenses and recorded everything.
“Do you think she used a love potion on Papa?” I asked. It did seem odd, the way he had decided to marry her so quickly.
“Who can say? No one knows if love potions really work,” said Elodie. “Alexandre told me that her mother mentioned that Lady Françoise was a fool who took too long to declare her love for your father, which made him easy to seduce. But poisons are real.”
That tea she was always giving him. That blasted tea she said the doctor had prescribed. Most likely the exact same tea she gave me, but delivered slowly over months. How poetic it would have been for father and daughter to die by the same hand. Lady Catherine must have been thrilled before it all went wrong.
“But you don’t have to worry,” Elodie said. “A letter from Auguste arrived yesterday. The king has the logbooks and the testimony from Alexandre that she gave at the palace a few days ago. Alexandre’s words and the books convinced him of the truth. He ordered Lady Catherine’s inheritance of Monsieur le Marquis’s effects revoked. The château and everything inside it are yours now, as are all your father’s assets.”
I said nothing. Elodie climbed onto the bed and lay down beside me. We snuggled against each other, like we did when we were children. It seemed like so long ago that we were young and innocent. So much had happened since. I let myself cry then. For all that I’d lost and all that Lady Catherine had taken from me.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
“Do you need me to go in with you?” Elodie asked Alexandre and me as we stood side by side before the door to the king’s throne room. “We can try to convince the king that you need extra moral support.”