French Passion (28 page)

The letter concluded:

At the moment France is a place of dire danger for one of noble blood. It would be best for you
—
and he you love
—
to emigrate. You could settle in the Americas where he owns an estate. In my letter to our guardian, I have given similar advice about emigration
.

Reading, a bleakness settled over me.

“What does he say?” the Comte asked.

“He's miserable and lonely.”

“And ashamed of running?”

“Why do you always say the worst of him? He didn't run! He believes the King can best be served outside France.”

“Indubitably,” the Comte said in a smooth voice. “He requests funds from me. It's still possible for an émigré to receive money from France. So at least, my dear, he's miserable and lonely in comfort.”

“Thank you, Comte.”

“He's my ward.” The Comte poured deep crimson wine from a rock crystal decanter, handed me a glass. “I've ordered supper.”

“It's late, I must get home.”

“You can spare one evening, surely.”

“I live with André.”

“So I hear.” The dark eyes gleamed oddly. “That's why you must stay. I need you to explain his beliefs. He's on the other side of the Revolution. I'm ignorant of what he hopes to accomplish, putting a torch into a barrel of gunpowder.”

My muscles tensed angrily under fine silk. But to talk about André, even in defense of his principles, would be disloyal. I managed to restrain my anger.

Touching the necklace, I asked, “How did you have this copied so perfectly?”

“It's no copy. I arranged with the pawnbroker to buy the stones and setting. Your pockmarked serving wench drove a hard bargain. Fortunately.” He set down his goblet. “I'm sorry, my dear, about your aunt.”

I closed my eyes thinking,
Auntie, you were so kind to us, cuddling me and Jean-Pierre to your warm bosom, and now I'll never be able to thank you. Never
.… A faint dizziness washed over me.

“What is it?” The Comte's forehead was creased with concern. “What's wrong, my dear?”

“Thinking of Aunt Thérèse.”

“That was more than grief. You aren't the same, are you?”

The dizziness had frightened me. Was it a warning that soon I would enter into one of those mental blanks? “No,” I replied leadenly, “I'm not the same.”

“Do you have some malady?”

I shook my head. “But there's whole hours I can't account for. It's as if another mind inhabits my head. Yet I behave normally. That is, if I'm with others, they don't notice that I'm not me.” How was it I could so easily tell the Comte what I'd kept secret from André? “I can't remember. That's what's terrifying, the long, missing hours that I cannot remember.”

“I've heard,” said the Comte in a muffled tone, “that when memory is too painful, the mind escapes.”

The gilt clock chimed seven. The hour André sometimes arrived home at the Inn of St. Antoine. Other nights, though, nights that normally I dreaded, he had to meet with his fellow deputies. For the first time I found myself hoping he would be caught in some discussion of policy until late. “My clothing should be dry,” I said. “I'll change and go home.”

The Comte ignored my remark. “I've also heard,” he said, “that unburdening the memory can effect a cure. What happened to you, my dear? Maybe telling the one who caused your suffering will cure you.”

His swarthy, clever face was wiped clean of every emotion save tender anxiety. His eyes understood me, compelled me. Maybe it was this utterly knowing sympathy. All at once I was reliving the awesome quiet of the Bastille, the dank chill, the red chilblains sore on my knuckles, the sunless days and tear-filled nights.

Never had I been able to verbally pierce the horror of my months in Secret, never been able to speak of it to anyone, even André. Now, suddenly, I was overcome with the need.

The misery welled up, aching in my throat, and I couldn't halt the telling. My anxiety about returning to the inn left me, and I sat in the gray silk study surrounded by priceless miniatures and I heard myself talking of cold and hunger, talking of a loneliness so deep that it throbbed in the bone marrow. I told of the gentle idiot guard whom I'd rescued from the pike. I told of the smuggled letter and the insanity it had roused in me, of the terror of liberation, of my crazed dash through Paris to warn André, of my near rape by the brutal carter.

Spasmodically, tears would build up in me, and I would halt to gasp them out. The Comte listened exactly as I wished him to, not commenting, moving only to give me a dry kerchief.

While old horrors spewed from me, the fire had died. Luminous cinders rose like burned-out stars. When my emotions were drained and I could speak no more, I gazed into the fireplace. The Comte, also silent, hunched forward, poking at logs until flames rose.

Footmen were setting a table for two. I didn't protest. White-gloved hands served us
quenelles
. These miniature sole soufflés afloat in a delicate, creamy shrimp sauce—a specialty of the Comte's head chef—were a favorite of mine. I played with the fish, unable to eat.

Our plates were cleared. We were served slender spears of asparagus, green-tipped and out of season.

I broke the silence. “At St. Antoine herb market, often there're no vegetables.”

“St. Antoine's always been the poorest district.”

There was a peculiar deadness in his voice that roused me to look at him. Though the Comte's character always had eluded me (possibly by the very nature of his brilliance and age), his moods were familiar. I'd never seen him like this. Bemused with unhappiness.

I reached across fine-woven damask as if to comfort him, then my hand shrank back. The tentative gesture didn't escape the Comte. Rather than lifting a quizzical brow, though, he toyed with an asparagus.

“Are you aware, my dear, that you're the only person ever to hear of my innermost mind? That first morning after I took you, then, in telling you of my love, I explained myself.” With a sharp click, his knife cut through the vegetable. “Once again I find myself going in for the confessional. And it's not so strange that my feelings are a precise contradiction of the equality that your poet wishes were possible.”

“Equality is possible.” My response came automatically. “Across the sea, in the Americas, men are equal.”

“There, too, my dear, you'll find rich and poor, slave and free. I've studied history enough to know that every culture, whether despotic or benevolent, has a small ruling elite.”

“Here, that day soon will end.”

“No doubt in the near future France will be overcome by rabble. But, my dear, the rabble will be ruled by a clique. I believe these men will be far less worthy than myself.”

“No,” I denied, thinking of André.

“Yes. The good will be forced out. Bloodshed and cruelty will make Frenchmen long for our Old Regime.” The Comte spoke with quiet indifference, as if he had no connection with the dying regime. “But let's not argue politics. It's hardly my point.”

Three footmen filed in, bearing dishes topped with silver domes. The Comte, ignoring his servants, continued in the same musingly intent voice.

“Before this evening,” he said, “I believed in my privilege with the same certainty that I believed the sun rose in the east and set in the west. It was an unalterable, unarguable fact that I belonged to the breed for whom all others existed. Subordinate creatures were for our pleasure, or to pay us taxes, do our work. Just as it never occurred to me to question having a liver, two hands, a beating heart, so I never questioned my own rank. You, as one of the minor nobility, a mere woman, were subservient to me.”

“You felt so lofty?”

“Lofty?” He frowned. “You haven't followed me. Think of the Arabian horse I gave you.”

Blanche, I'd named the pretty little mare. I had loved her, raced her through dawn, never permitted her to be stabled without first walking her to cool her off. And, of course, I'd never considered whether I had the right to run her until she was lathered. How amazed I would have been had she one morning announced that she was my equal and demanded to be treated as such. My eyes widened with comprehension.

The Comte nodded. “Yes. That's how I feel. Not that it stopped me from adoring your courage, your beauty, your wit, pride, spirit. How I ached to go to the land of the dead and bring the child back for you. Your betrayal drove me mad. I love you to desperation—and never once questioned my rights over you.”

“Now, though?”

“While you were telling of the Bastille, I felt a repugnance so profound that I was shaken to my soul.”

The footmen served scallops of veal poached in wine. Neither of us lifted our cutlery.

“The Revolution is changing that kind of power,” I said. “The Constitution
will
make men equal.”

He shook his head. “Not in this world, never in this world, my dear. Equality is not in the nature of mankind. Always there have been those who rule, those who're ruled. Strong over weak. Men over women. That is the awesome injustice of our race. The tyranny of mankind. And, my dear, I'm apologizing to you, begging you to forgive me my part in the injustice.”

I felt an odd dart of awe. The Comte, apologizing, had questioned not merely the circumstance of his birth but the very nature of humanity. I didn't care for his cynical conclusions. I couldn't deny, though, that monumental inequities existed everywhere. He continued to watch me with enigmatic questioning. Dignified. However, his pallor had increased as if he were hemorrhaging internally.

“I bear you no grudge,” I said. And found this true.

“I'm absolved?”

“Yes.”

He cut into pearly veal. “The Comtesse died,” he said.

The abrupt change in conversation unnerved me.

“So Old Lucien said,” I blurted, adding, “I'm sorry about the Comtesse.”

“You're my wife. You have been since the night I came to you in a blizzard. And, my dear, it's time we legalized our situation.”

I was on my feet, clutching at the heavy damask napkin.

“You're mad!” I cried, forgetting the liveried servants. “You know I love André. I've always loved him, and I always will!”

“You haven't married him,” the Comte pointed out. “Cardinal Rohan, who officiated at my second wedding—”

“Please order my clothes.”

“—lives nearby—”

“I'll leave without changing!”

“—and has agreed to come here to perform the Sacrament.”

Already shattered by seeing him and by the emotional outpouring of my past anguish, this was too much. Terrified of blanking out, I cried, “
No
,” and my voice broke.

The Comte waved a dismissal. Crimson-liveried servants moved soundless over Aubusson carpets. The door shut. We were alone.

My heart pounded wildly, dizziness swept in waves over me, my thighs quivered, and I sank back into my chair. “You've had your joke, Comte.”

“I'm no more joking than I was a few minutes ago.”

The glittering passion in his gaze increased my tumult. I shook with the nightmare of losing control. Hoping to restore myself, I reached for my wine and my shaking hand overturned the goblet; red spotched across white damask and neither of us moved.

“I've never loved you,” I whispered.

“You're mine.”

“Please, Comte. Let me go home.…”

“This is your home.” He was standing over me, his diamond buttons glittering in and out of focus. “You belong wherever I am.”

He jerked me to my feet, his arms encircling my waist and shoulders. He was iron and his mouth bruised. His lips were parting my trembling lips with a hard insistence. Weakly, as if from a vast distance, I was aware that we perfectly illustrated the harsh law of nature that he'd just pointed out. Even without his birthright of rank, the Comte would have ruled others, for it is a natural law that such hard, masculine drive as he possessed inevitably commands other men and magnetizes women. Impossible to fight such strength. Weak, angry, frightened, dizzy, melting, I surrendered to his dominance, clinging to him. I've never loathed anyone more.

“André,” I whispered despairingly.

“You're to forget him.”

“I love him.”

“You don't know who or what he is,” the Comte muttered hoarsely. “He hasn't told you of himself, has he? I've bared myself to you. You're part of me. You're mine.”

“You're hurting me, making me swoon.…”

“I want you hurt and swooning. I want you gasping with passion. I want you in every possible way. My dearest dear, my love, you know what I want. Oh my God, how I've missed your sweet, sweet body. You're the only woman who's ever given me what I need.”

His embrace was tighter than death, and I couldn't breathe, and he was whispering that he'd make up for the torment he'd caused me, whispering of his eternal love, whispering the most obscene endearments. The last thing I can remember is feebly pushing away his face, trying to halt his inexorable kisses from traveling down my arched throat, trying to stop him from kissing the pale green silk over my beating, desperate heart.

Chapter Eleven

I jerked awake. Wan morning sunlight fell in a streak between the hangings of the Comte's bed. Our naked limbs were entangled, and when I tried to sit up, he didn't let me.

“What am I doing here?”

“Can't you guess?” he asked with drowsy, contented amusement. “My lovely, wanton wife.”

“Wife?”

“Last night Cardinal Rohan performed the ceremony.”

“No.” My skin had gone cold. “You're lying.”

“The servants witnessed.”

“I don't believe you.”

“We are joined by God until death do us part. And believe me, only death can do it. I know. I tried to squirm out of my last matrimonial venture in order to marry you.”