British Ambassador.
The two words hit me like a physical blow. They echoed in the silent study, changing everything. My neat little world of internal audits and palace intrigue just exploded into the realm of international espionage.
Polignac wasn't just a common thief trying to protect his access to the royal slush fund. He wasn't just a court parasite fighting for his position.
He was selling out his country to its greatest rival.
A cold, terrifying clarity washed over me. The game had changed. All the little moves, all the petty court squabbles—they were nothing. This was the real threat. This was high treason.
"Are you certain?" I asked, my voice dangerously quiet.
Orléans nodded, his face grim. "My man is reliable. He saw them. The Duke's most trusted agent, leaving the British Embassy long after midnight."
I started to pace, my mind racing a million miles a minute. This was the weapon I needed. The ultimate leverage. A public accusation of treason against a high noble, backed by a witness, would destroy Polignac utterly.
But it was a nuclear option. It would shatter the court, create panic, and destabilize the entire country at a time when it was already a powder keg waiting for a spark. It could easily backfire and start the very revolution I was trying to stop.
"He's not just trying to save his finances," I said, thinking aloud. "He's protecting his English paymasters. Or worse, he's planning something with them."
"Cousin, this is a viper you have by the tail," Orléans warned, his voice low. "If you accuse him and you fail to prove it, it won't just be your reputation that's ruined."
"He'll have my head," I finished. "I know." I slammed my fist softly on the desk, the impact a dull thud in the quiet room. "So I can't accuse him. Not publicly."
I had to be smarter. More subtle.
"I have to make him expose himself," I murmured. "I have to make him panic."
The next evening, I arranged a small, private card party in the Queen's apartments. It was an intimate affair, an invitation that protocol made impossible to refuse. The guest list was very exclusive.
Me. Marie. And the Duc and Duchess de Polignac.
The air in the room was thick enough to choke on. It was a polite, civilized version of a gangland standoff. We smiled. We made small talk. We drank wine. And every word, every gesture, was weighed and measured.
Marie was magnificent. I had explained the plan to her, and she played her part with a cool poise that made my heart swell with pride. She was no longer a pawn. She was a player.
We sat around a small card table, the candlelight glinting off the jewels on the women's necks.
Yolande de Polignac, the Duchess, was trying desperately to act as if nothing had happened between her and Marie. Her smiles were brittle, her laughter a little too loud. Her husband, the Duke, was a mask of aristocratic calm. But I could see the tension in his jaw, the way his eyes darted to me whenever he thought I wasn't looking.
As I dealt the cards, I steered the conversation with a practiced, casual ease. We spoke of the recent hunt, of a new opera, of the weather. And then, I made my move.
"I had a fascinating meeting today," I said, my voice light as I laid down a card. "Our new British ambassador is quite the charming man. So eloquent." I looked directly at Polignac. "He has so many interesting... foreign interests here at court."
The Duke's hand tightened on the cards he held, accidentally creasing the corner of the King of Spades. It was a tiny, almost imperceptible movement. But I saw it.
Marie didn't miss a beat. "Indeed," she said, her voice cool as she played her own card. "One must be so careful who one trusts with secrets these days. A secret told to the wrong person can be so... damaging."
Got him.
That tiny flinch. That momentary crack in his perfect, aristocratic facade. It was everything. He wasn't just guilty; he was terrified that I knew. I had just lit a fire under him. Now he was going to do something stupid. Something desperate.
The rest of the evening was a blur of false smiles and veiled threats. The moment the Polignacs left, their faces frozen masks of civility, Marie and I looked at each other. The tension in the room broke, and a shared surge of adrenaline took its place. We had done it. We had cornered him without saying a single accusatory word.
"Did you see his face?" she whispered, her eyes shining with the thrill of victory.
"I did," I said, a real smile finally breaking through my own mask.
We walked from her card room through a moonlit colonnade that connected her apartments to mine. It was a private walkway, open to the cool night air. The sounds of the palace were distant and muffled. It felt like we were the only two people in the world.
The shared danger, the shared triumph—it had created an undeniable, electric connection between us.
Marie, giddy with relief and a little bit of wine, stumbled slightly on an uneven stone. I instinctively reached out, my hand closing around her arm to steady her.
But this time, I didn't let go.
The touch lingered. Her skin was warm beneath the silk of her sleeve. We stopped, standing close in the silver moonlight, the scent of her perfume filling the small space between us.
"We make a good team," she said, her voice soft, breathless.
I looked down at her. The moonlight softened the lines of her face, making her look impossibly beautiful, impossibly real. "Yes," I managed, my own voice a little husky. "We do."
"I was so frightened tonight," she confessed, her eyes locked on mine. "But with you... I wasn't. For the first time, I felt like a Queen."
"You are a Queen," I said, and the words were not a platitude. They were the absolute truth.
She was strong, and smart, and brave. She was nothing like the flighty, doomed figure from my history books.
This wasn't an act anymore. This feeling that was coiling in my gut, this fierce, protective warmth that spread through my chest whenever I looked at her... it was real.
And it was the most dangerous thing in this entire godforsaken century. Because if I started fighting for her, for Marie, instead of just for my own survival, I was going to make mistakes. Emotional, reckless, fatal mistakes.
I gently released her arm, the loss of contact feeling like a physical blow. "We have to finish this," I said, my voice rougher than I intended. "He's panicked now. He's going to make a move for that ledger."
She nodded, her eyes still searching mine. "What do we do?"
"We let him find it," I said.
The final trap. It was time to spring it.
I had Jean, now recovering in a comfortable room in my wing of the palace, his arm in a clean sling, write a formal attestation. It was a simple, damning document. It stated, under his expert seal as a craftsman, that the unique watermarked paper used for the fraudulent ledgers came exclusively from the Polignac household's private stationer.
It was the final nail in the coffin.
I took that document, along with the original incriminating pages I had found, and placed them in a heavy, leather dispatch box on my desk. I locked it with a simple key. It was bait that was too tempting to resist.
Then, I gave the order. I dismissed my new, loyal guards from my study for one hour, citing a need for absolute privacy. I had them replaced with the old rotation of Swiss Guards.
The rotation that included our traitor.
I was leaving the hen house open, with the fox already inside.
Marie and I waited in an antechamber down the hall. Every minute that ticked by on the grandfather clock in the corner felt like an hour. The silence was deafening.
"What if he doesn't take it?" she whispered, wringing her hands.
"He will," I said, with more confidence than I felt. "He's a gambler who thinks he has a losing hand. He'll do anything to get a new set of cards."
The clock chimed the hour. My heart pounded against my ribs. Had it worked? Had he taken the bait?
Suddenly, we heard running footsteps in the hallway. The door to the antechamber burst open. It was Captain De La Tour, his face grim, his uniform slightly disheveled.
"We have him, Your Majesty!" he announced, his voice ringing with a grim triumph that sent a wave of relief through me so powerful it almost buckled my knees. "We caught the Duke de Polignac himself, burning the documents in the fireplace of his study!"
It was over. We did it. We had won. I looked at Marie, and a wide, brilliant smile broke across her face.
But the Captain wasn't finished. His expression was not one of simple victory. It was horrified.
"He was not alone," De La Tour said, his voice dropping, his eyes filled with a fresh, terrible shock. He looked directly at me, as if delivering a death blow.
"The Comte d'Artois... your own brother... was with him, helping him feed the fire."