Banquet of Lies Read Free

or two, so she could sleep, and plan her way forward.
    She climbed the steps to the kitchens with a smile, even though she was so tired it was an effort to put one foot in front of the other without falling. Georges always said he would never work in a home that had a subterranean kitchen. He’d never go back to a hellhole like the patisserie in Paris where he started out, with its dark, smoky cellar-kitchens, now he was a celebrated chef.
    She stepped into a kitchen in the throes of preparing breakfast. She was glad she hadn’t arrived just before dinner. Then, no matter how much Georges loved her, he wouldn’t have given her more than a concerned glance as he got on with his job.
    Eyes turned in her direction as she opened the door and stepped inside. There was a cry from the far end of the room; then Georges was making his way toward her, fierce as a hussar, trampling down those in his way.
    “ Ma petite! Mon petit chou! ” He grabbed her in a tight hug, and for the first time in the five days since she’d seen her father struck down, she felt safe.
    “Please speak only French,” she had the wit to whisper in his ear, speaking in French herself. She was aware of every eye on them, and she wanted no one to hear her name, or anything else about her.
    He gave her a strange look, pursing his lips under his thick mustache, but he nodded briefly. Then he looked around the kitchen, raising his arms and clapping his hands so suddenly that Gigi jumped, as did everyone else in the room.
    “Thierry! You take over, and do not let me down. Everyplate to be parfait, comprends ?” He scowled at a thin, diminutive man in an apron, pointing a threatening finger at him.
    Then he took her arm and swept her into a room off the kitchen. Gigi didn’t think she imagined the sigh of relief from every person behind her just before Georges closed the door, leaving his staff to their own devices for a while.
    “What is it, Giselle?” Georges grasped her shoulders with both hands. “What has happened?”
    “My father was murdered.” Her voice wavered, but she had to leave again in a few short minutes to find a place to stay, so she mercilessly crushed the pain that threatened to rise up and consume her. She glanced around to compose herself. The small sitting room led into a study, and beyond, to a closed door. Georges’s bedroom, she guessed.
    Her body cried out for a safe bed to sleep in.
    The bone-shaking journey across Sweden to Gothenburg had taken a full twenty-four hours, and she knew without doubt that if her father hadn’t already arranged it, hadn’t already planned that they were to leave the party at Tessin Palace and get straight into the coach, already packed with their things, the shadow man would have run her to ground before she’d left Stockholm.
    “Murder?” Georges let his hands fall. “You are certain?”
    “I witnessed it.” She turned away and drew in a deep breath as she got herself and the threatening tears under control. “Georges, I’m afraid the people who killed my father will work out I’m in London if I send word to Pierre. He’s still in Stockholm, cooking for the Countess de Salisburg. Please, find some very discreet way of letting him know I’m safe.”
    “Of course.” Georges stroked her arm, soothing her like she was a small child. And no doubt to him she was. He and Pierre always thought of her as she’d been when she was ten, grieving for her mother, hungry for something to do and for the sound of French around her.
    “Thank you.” She drew in a deep breath. “I must go. Please don’t let anyone know I’m back. No one. It is dangerous for you, and for me.”
    Georges frowned, looking so fierce Gigi wished the shadow man was here now so that Georges could tear him apart. Or chop him with his cleaver.
    “You’re going home to Goldfern House?” he asked.
    She shook her head. “That is the first place the man who’s after me will look. I have to find somewhere else. Perhaps