A Veiled Antiquity (Torie O'Shea Mysteries) by MacPherson Rett

Author:MacPherson, Rett [MacPherson, Rett]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2013-10-08T00:00:00+00:00

Fourteen

Papers were piled on my desk, books were in my lap and on the floor. It was one A.M., some twelve hours after I had spoken to Andrew Wheaton. I heard Rudy snoring from the bed and felt a twinge of guilt for keeping him up as late as I did.

I poured the rest of my Dr Pepper into my glass even though the ice cubes had long since melted. I had a pencil behind each ear and one in my hand. I wore only a T-shirt, extra-large of course, and my underwear. I could never have lived in a society before the invention of extra-large T-shirts. For sleeping, nothing beats them.

Fritz had curled himself up under my chair right at my feet. If I was upstairs, he was either in the middle of my bed or at my feet. He was also strategically snuggled so that the light from my lamp on the desk did not hit his eyes. Fritz was a very smart dog.

I began with the first letter. There was no name given to whom the letter was written, just Countess. And it was signed only Antoine. But between the opening and closing of the letter there were a few names. One was the former Archbishop of Reims. All I had to do was figure out who was Archbishop of Reims in the mid-to-late 1600s. Antoine speaks of him as dying in 1694 so his reign must have been some time before that.

… Henri de Lorraine. The Duc du Guise. The name jumped off the page in front of me.

I knocked over my desk lamp when I connected the name. It crashed to the floor, pulling the plug out of the wall. Fritz yelped.

“Not now, honey,” Rudy said from the bed.

It was dark as pitch and I didn’t want to turn on the overhead light, because it was bright and obnoxious. I had no choice. I couldn’t get the plug back in the socket by feeling alone. I can’t figure out why it is so difficult. You can feel the holes and you have the plug, but it just won’t go in. So I turned on the overhead light, and it shone directly into our room, onto the bed, and into Rudy’s eyes. He rolled over rather violently and shoved the pillow over his head.

“Sorry,” I whispered. I plugged the desk lamp back in and turned off the overhead light. I sat in my chair, listening to it creak, and stared at the book in front of me. Henri de Lorraine, the Duc du Guise, was descended from Charles de Lorraine, who was the heir to the throne of France when Hugh Capet usurped the throne at the end of the tenth century.

Charles de Lorraine was the ancestor of Marie Dijon; I recalled that from her family charts.

Louis XIV was the descendant of Hugh Capet the usurper.

Was this letter in 1756 pointing toward the possibility of overthrowing the French crown?

“Holy cow,” I said aloud. “The letter from Antoine says ‘his information to use against the crown is intact and somewhere safe.

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