Rogue Angel - Swordsman's Legacy Part 33

Annja swallowed back the first word that came to her tongue, and instead shook her head negatively. "Sorry you lost the chain mail, Roux. Thanks for..." For opening up a whole new mystery for me to ponder. "We'll meet again. I look forward to it. Bonsoir. Bonsoir."

He waved and stepped back to sit on the edge of his desk.

Annja did not look back. She fought the urge to turn and race up to him and embrace him as a daughter would her father. The man simply wanted answers. She understood his pining. But she couldn't give him what he wanted.

And she wasn't ready for what he wanted to offer her.

ASCHER TUGGED a T-s.h.i.+rt over his head as Annja arrived at his hospital room. He was getting dressed to check out. She'd scanned his chart, hanging outside the door. They'd sewn up the bullet wound and prescribed him Vicodin for the pain.

"Annja!"

"You're looking rested, Vallois."

"And you're..."

He scanned her attire; she was still dressed in the clothes she'd worn all day yesterday, which had included their adventures in the bowels of the city. Blood stained her hip, and dirt and soot scuffed her jeans. She hadn't seen a comb in ages, and she was tired.

"Ready for a real vacation," she provided.

"Sorry about that. Next time I invite you to Paris it will be strictly for leisure."

"Did you say leisure or pleasure?"

"Pleasure? You would accept the invitation?" he asked.

"You'll have to wait and see."

An enthusiastic wink preceded his crossing the room to pull her into a hug. It was a friendly we-survived-a-great-adventure kind of hug, which relieved Annja. She was in no condition, physically, to volley any flirtations.

"Did you get the box?" he asked.

The man did have a one-track mind. Focused on riches, as usual. "It went up in flames with the entire BHDC headquarters."

"What? After all our work?"

"We did spend a lot of time tracking the elusive thing. I did get a chance to look it over, though. I'm guessing it was a sort of trinket box, put out to advertise The Three Musketeers. The Three Musketeers. It had All For One, One For All carved around the box top." It had All For One, One For All carved around the box top."

"But that means...this was all a wild-goose chase?"

"I don't think so." She sat on the canvas folding chair next to his hospital bed. It felt good to sit and not be tense. And to not have to stand before Roux and face his disappointment. "I think there really was a treasure, but someone claimed it and left the box there in its place."

Ascher settled on the edge of the rumpled hospital bed, white sport socks in his hands. He let out a heavy sigh. "Dumas?"

"No. He died a pauper."

"Like our Charles de Castelmore. It had to have been in the mid-to late-nineteenth century if what you say about the box is true."

"Yes, which rules out any of d'Artagnan's contemporaries, including Fouquet and Mazarin." Annja zipped open her backpack and pulled out a notebook where most of her notes on the lost sword and this whole adventure were scribbled. "But Auguste Maquet..."

"Who forced Dumas to sign a doc.u.ment guaranteeing to pay him wages-"

"Which he was never paid because Dumas was in financial straits-"

"Died a rich man," Ascher concluded.

"Exactly."

She found the page where she'd copied the notation regarding Maquet's building a home in Dourdan and living rather well, much to the surprise of his friends and family. No one was sure how he managed it-for all were aware Dumas had stiffed him the owed monies.

Pleased she'd solved the riddle-though it was only conjecture-it fit well enough into her idea of history. Annja waited for Ascher's reaction.

"You're wis.h.i.+ng you never invited me to the dig, I bet." She walked over to the window. Fading wooden roof slats protected the bird market on the street across from the hospital.

"Never." From behind, he put his arms around her waist. "I did lose a treasure that could have financed a new addition to my fencing school."

"You'll find a way. You're an industrious man. Besides, the treasure was long gone before we got there," she said.

"I also lost a kidney."

"You can survive with one. You'll be fencing in no time."

"But I did get the girl."

She turned in his arms. "Sort of."

"You are going to leave me for another adventure?"

"I've already got a new a.s.signment. I have to be in Ireland by tomorrow afternoon."

"That gives you twenty-four hours. The Chunnel will shoot you to the British Isles in less than two hours. You can stay the day and have lunch with me at the Eiffel Tower?"

"Isn't that a little touristy?"

"So you'll stay?"

"A girl should never refuse a free meal," she said.

Epilogue.

Nineteenth century.

Alexandre had a way about him. He could divert a man's attentions and get him to work. Work furiously. Work desperately. Putting words to paper.

And Auguste had enjoyed his years collaborating with the man. It was satisfying work, though it was far from fulfilling. He knew history, and read much, and had ideas. He was a born treasure hunter, if only on paper. But now he had little to claim as a.s.sets beyond a small apartment on the Left Bank.

His financial straits had forced him to draw up a doc.u.ment that would ensure Alexandre pay him one hundred thousand livres over the next six years to keep Auguste quiet about what works, exactly, they had collaborated on. Auguste then agreed to renounce all claims to future royalties.

He simply wanted the monies owed to him. Yes, he understood that Alexandre was no better off than him, but Dumas had squandered not only his own money, but also that which should have been paid to Auguste for his work in the first place. That d.a.m.n chateau Dumas had built in Saint-Germainen-Laye being such folly. He was generous, yes, but recklessly so. It was almost as if the man did not know the value of things.

Alexandre agreeably signed the doc.u.ment. It had stunned Auguste at the time. But he and Dumas had been true friends over the years; perhaps his former partner had turned over a new leaf.

It had been over a year. Dumas had made no attempts to contact Auguste. No money had made it into Auguste's hands. He should have expected as much. Blood from a stone and all that. He'd been forced to start court proceedings. Dumas denounced him as a rogue and cheat. There was no way to win against one so famous and popular with all of France.

It was on a particular evening, as he whiled away a miserable defeat in a local tavern, that Auguste remembered the map, copied carefully from Nicolas Fouquet's files while researching the musketeer stories. A map Francois Mansart had drawn up for Queen Anne. It would lead a very lucky musketeer beneath the labyrinths and catacombs on the Left Bank to a royal treasure.

Auguste suspected Fouquet had intended to go after the treasure himself, but he had been waylaid when arrested for embezzlement. And having ruled out d'Artagnan retrieving the cache, Auguste had the smallest hope that the queen's treasure might still be intact.

It could really exist.

There was no possible way to navigate the keyless map, but Auguste had an idea that it was somewhere close to the Val-de-Grace. Where else?

It would be an arduous venture, crawling about beneath the city with no means to navigate the twisting pa.s.sages on the map. But he was desperate. After breaking ties with Dumas, he quickly found that no publisher was interested in what Auguste Maquet had to write. Who was he?

He tapped the box Dumas had given him. Painted white and flourished with ridiculous commercial detail. A trinket designed to promote the book. All For One, One For All danced around the top. It was worthless, as Dumas's friends.h.i.+p had turned out to be.

"To a successful venture," Auguste said, and he raised his last bottle of Anjou wine to his lips.

Seventeen days later, Auguste Maquet retired to a quiet countryside estate near Dourdan. The motto engraved across the decorative stone ribbon over the doorway read Selon Mes Merites. Selon Mes Merites.

"As I deserve."