CHAPTER THREEThe Duc de Salvoire climbed the twisting stairs that led from one part of The Palace to another. The candles had burned low in their sconces and, where one had flickered out, he banged his knee against a protruding pillar in the darkness and swore beneath his breath.
‘I am getting far too old at twenty-six for creeping along passages in the middle of the night,’ he told himself wryly with a twist of his lips that his enemies would have recognised as being an expression of his most caustic mood.
As he reached the wing that led on to the Queen’s apartments and those of her suite, he hesitated and for a moment considered returning the way he had come. And then with a shrug of his shoulders he realised that René would be waiting for him. It would be churlish and discourteous to
