Chapter Thirty-Seven

Back at the hotel, I headed immediately for the salon, where I knew the Lavignes were due to take tea but found no sign of them. Spotting one of Sylla's contacts working on the reception desk, I drew her aside and she informed me that the Lavignes had gone upstairs to their room twenty minutes ago. Winnie and Maud had entered the hotel right behind them, and seeing the Lavignes – or rather, the Browns – settled they'd headed out to our rendezvous at Café Fleur. I had just missed them.

Thanking the young woman, I made my way straight up the stairs for Lucy's room. This, I thought, might work to my advantage. Lucy and her parents had separate rooms, and hopefully catching her alone would make it much easier to lure her up to my suite. I hadn't quite worked out how I was going to do that, but I'd think of something. Perhaps something to do with wedding gowns… After all, she was posing as the sister of the groom.

Another stab of anger struck. It might have been my job to keep Oliver calm and focused, but beneath my cool demeanour I was burning up. I knew what Oliver's mother and his sister had meant to him, especially growing up with his father, and the fact that these people had taken something so pure and good in his life and twisted it for their own gain made me feel sick inside.

I moved down the thickly carpeted hallway, towards Lucy's room, and knocked softly on the door. I didn't want to alert the Browns in the next room of my presence. There was no answer.

"Helene," I said quietly. "It's Marigold. I need to talk to you." When that produced no response, I tried the door handle, which turned easily.

I gave the door a gentle push and was met by the sound of raised voices. I froze in the doorway for a moment before my brain made sense of where the sound was coming from. There was a connecting door between Lucy's room and her parents'. The three of them were clearly next door, locked in a ferocious argument.

Slipping into Lucy's room as soundlessly as possible, I edged towards the connecting door, which had been left slightly ajar.

Heart pounding, I took hold of the handle and slowly, slowly widened the crack until I could peep through to the other side.

Lucy stood in the middle of the room, tears running down her face as she faced her parents.

"I won't let you do it!" Her voice was high, breathless. "You swore no one would get hurt! You said it was a victimless crime. But it never was. Never!"

"Don't be hysterical," Mr Brown responded coolly. "What do I always tell you? We might have to get our hands dirty now and then, but everything your mother and I do is for you. For our family."

"Family!" Lucy spat. "What would you know about family? Oliver Lockhart cares more about family than you ever did, and I won't let you hurt anyone. I won't!"

"Lucy, darling." Mrs Brown's voice was soothing. "This one thing, this one small thing, and then we'll be set for life. We will finally be able to give you everything you deserve. A life of luxury, a place in society, a husband and a family of your own. And no more worry. Never again. No more penny-pinching. No more jobs. A clean sweep." She set her hand on Lucy's arm. "You know how much your father and I love you."

The look in Lucy's blue eyes was anguished. She turned her back on her parents. "I heard you," she said, determination in her voice. "Just now. I heard what you have planned, and I won't be a part of it. I'm going to tell them everything. If you want to avoid prison, you should gather your things and go – get out of here before it's too late."

"Lucy, sweetheart," Mr Brown began, but then Lucy made a soft sound of surprise and crashed suddenly to the floor.

For several seconds nothing moved. I stood with my hands pressed against my mouth to stop myself from calling out as Mrs Brown stood over Lucy's prone body, arm raised, a small gold ornament in her hand.

"Joan!" Mr Brown sighed. "Was that really necessary?"

With a terrifying cool, Mrs Brown leaned over Lucy and checked her pulse.

"She's fine, just knocked out," she said shortly. "We must get on with it before she comes to."

Mr Brown eyed Lucy narrowly, and the speculative expression on his face made my heart sink and my stomach churn. "What if she tells them the truth after she wakes up?"

I braced myself to intervene. Surely the man couldn't mean to murder his own daughter?

Mrs Brown scoffed. "She won't have the stomach after the thing is done. She's soft; she won't want to see us arrested. And once the threat is gone, she'll be living in style. Money can make a person far more amenable to telling a lie or two, I've found."

"So we just leave her here?" Mr Brown said, eyebrows raised.

"I told you: she's perfectly fine," Mrs Brown huffed, already striding to the door that led out to the hallway. "Now come on – there is much to do."

With that, they both left. I waited for a handful of painfully loud heartbeats until I was certain they had really gone.

I yanked the door open and flew across to Lucy, gently turning her face and brushing the hair away from her forehead. Her chest rose and fell, but she was horribly still.

"Lucy!" I patted her cheek, panic lacing my words. "Lucy, can you hear me?"

After a few terrible seconds, her fingers twitched in mine.

"Lucy?" I said again, and relief rushed through me as her eyelids fluttered.

"Wh-what happened?" she asked, her voice shaky, as I gingerly helped her up into a sitting position.

I hesitated. It seemed impossible to tell her what had happened … that her own mother had knocked her down with such icy ruthlessness.

I didn't need time to find the right words, however, because her eyes widened in sudden understanding. "My parents…" she said dazedly.

I nodded.

Then another realization spread across her face. "You called me Lucy," she murmured.

"I did," I agreed. "Can you stand, do you think? We should get you to the bed. Someone should come and have a look at your head."

Lucy lifted her fingers to the back of her skull and winced. "Just a bump," she said, as we levered her up from the floor. She swayed for a moment, but then seemed to gather herself and moved back through to her own room, sitting on the edge of the bed with a sigh. She kept my hand in hers.

"I am glad," she said quietly, "that you know the truth. I have hated every moment of this deception. I was a fool to let them talk me into it. Foolish and weak." She closed her eyes briefly and a tear leaked out. "How did you find out?"

"I am not Mr Lockhart's fiancée," I said. "Mrs Finch and I work for a … detective agency of sorts. Mr Lockhart and I went to your school. We spoke to Madame Moreau."

"Madame." Lucy's smile was sad. "She was always kind to me." She looked at me inquisitively. "You are not really engaged to Mr Lockhart? It was … an act?"

"Yes," I said. "An act. Though that part is not important now. Do you want to tell me about it?" I asked carefully.

Lucy nodded. "Of course. You deserve the truth. You all do." She let go of my hand and looked down at her own fingers. "Helene and I were best friends," she said. "As close as you can imagine. Closer than sisters. We called ourselves twin souls. The day she started at Sainte-Geneviève's was the most fortunate day of my life. We were inseparable from that moment on. When my parents left me at school over the holidays, she would take me home to the Lavignes in Herblay."

Reaching under her pillow, Lucy pulled out the Bible we had found at Lockhart Hall. Opening the pages, she pulled out the piece of embroidery and spread it gently over the bed cover.

"HL," I said, the truth dawning. "Not Helene Lavigne at all. Helene and Lucy."

Lucy nodded, tears in her eyes. "Helene made it for me when we were about fourteen." She gave a watery chuckle. "She always was terrible at embroidery."

"But what about the scar?" I asked. "The one on your hand. It is just like Helene's."

Lucy lifted her palm. "It is the same as hers. We did it not long after she arrived at the school with a penknife. It was Helene's idea – to make us blood sisters, she said. A silly sort of ritual that we imagined was filled with binding magic. It bled like the devil, and we had to hide the evidence from Matron. Helene always seemed to be dragging us into scrapes … and then dragging us back out again."

"How did the plan to impersonate Helene come about?" I asked, and the question jarred us back to the present. Any lingering happiness fled Lucy's eyes.

"It was my fault, really," she admitted. "I should have known better than to let anything slip to my parents. I saw the advertisement that Mr Lockhart had placed in the paper – we always have the London papers delivered for news of home – and I realized when I saw the name that it was about Helene."

"Helene knew Mr Lockhart's name?" I asked. "She remembered who she was?"

Lucy bit her lip and nodded. "The story about losing her memory was true, but it didn't last long. Helene began to remember everything while we were still at school, but she never told a soul except me. She was happy in France – and she was so afraid, you see, of her father. Of being sent back…"

I nodded slowly. "So you saw the advertisement…" I prompted her.

"Yes. When we finished school, Helene tried to get me to go with her, but my parents had some scheme running in the south of France, and they swept me along." She bit her lip unhappily. "Then when that went wrong, it was on to the next town and the next. Helene and I stayed in touch by letter, and I clipped the advertisement to send to her." She closed her eyes for a moment. "I mentioned it over breakfast to my father, that Helene's brother was looking for her. Silly of me."

"And they realized there was a scheme to be hatched?" I guessed.

"Exactly." Lucy's sigh was weary. "Later that day they both confronted me. They had opened the letter and read the full contents, and they saw an opportunity to claim Helene's inheritance for themselves. You don't know what they're like," she said, eyes wide as she gripped my hand again. "The way they bully and belittle and wheedle until I hardly know what they're saying. They said that Helene had hidden from her family all these years, and clearly didn't want to be found. All that money was only sitting there; it was a victimless crime. Mr Lockhart would be happy to have his sister back and we'd be able to stop moving around, stop running. I would finally have a normal life, and we'd be protecting Helene, helping her to keep her secret. They made it sound…" She hesitated here. "Almost … reasonable.

"Only once we arrived in England, things seemed different. Mr Lockhart was so kind, so obviously concerned about his sister. Not what I had expected at all. I couldn't stand it. And then Mother began all that talk about marrying me off to someone with a title and I realized that I would be trapped in this lie for ever, that Lucy Brown would fade away and I would have to pretend to be Helene to a husband, to children, for the rest of my life…" Her words were tight, breathless, pain written in every line of her face.

"Lucy," I said quietly. "All that is done now. But I need to ask you … do you know where Helene is?"

"Helene?" Lucy repeated. "Of course I do. She is here in Paris."

"She's here," I breathed, but I was cut short by Lucy, who leaped suddenly to her feet, her face transformed into a mask of fear.

"Oh God, Helene!" she cried. "I forgot… My head… I was distracted… I can't believe…"

"Lucy," I said again as calmly as I could manage. "What is it? What's wrong?"

"It's my parents!" Lucy choked out, already halfway to the door. "I overheard them. Making plans. They said they wanted to eliminate any threat to the plan. Marigold!" Her eyes met mine, wide with panic. "They're going to kill Helene!"