French Passion (19 page)

“Where? By the Indian savages in America?”

“Here in Paris. See?” He opened his shirt. In flickering candlelight I saw his chest, strong yet so different from the Comte's barrel strength. André's muscles were young, and his skin smelled of salt and youth.

A fresh scar cut into the flesh below his right shoulder.

“But when?”

“Just after I was with you.”

“How did you get away?”

“I killed the man who did this,” he said bitterly. “It's been on my conscience.”

“But he would've killed you!”

“That doesn't matter. To me, killing's the ultimate evil. In my group many say they'll revel in the blood of the oppressors. Not me. I hate death.”

I touched the red scar line.

And felt the vibration as André said in a very quiet voice, “Where is he tonight?”

“Versailles. The Court entertains Emperor Joseph. I don't want to talk about anything or anyone except you and me.”

“I don't want to talk,” André said, his arm around me tightening as he drew me closer. Our kiss tasted of lovely pale wine. A warmth like the wine flowed through my veins, and I wanted him with every nerve.

He whispered, “Darling?”

“Ah yes, yes.”

“I've wanted you so long, and so much.”

“Me you.”

We lay on the outspread cape. The ground under us was packed dirt, hard, yet I didn't feel it. He was kissing my neck, his hands were at the tiny buttons down the back of my pale green bodice. That first time with André, I'd been innocent, ignorant, and—despite my yearning for him—afraid. Now, tutored by the Comte, my body had learned the art of pleasure, pleasure that I knew now I'd never yet fully experienced.

He eased down the bodice and my chemise until I was naked to the waist.

“You're so much lovelier than other women—”

I held a finger to his warm lips. “Only you and me. There's only you and me in this whole world,” I said. I'd undone his ruffled shirt, and now I pulled it from him. “I love it when we touch, I love your smells, I love you.”

And I pulled his face to my breasts. Then he began releasing my embroidered skirt, my stiff petticoats, pulling them off. He knelt at my feet, taking off green silk slippers, drawing down white silk stockings, lace-inset drawers.

“We have an endless forever,” I murmured, and lay back on Jean-Pierre's old wool cape, the remnants of food and wine next to me, watching André take off his boots, his breeches, and then he was naked.

“You're beautiful,” I whispered. “Very, very.”

“Now?”

“Please now.”

As he went into me, I gasped, and suddenly, swiftly, was overcome by a pleasure so exquisite that my muscles and nerves and mind rose, poising at some very high peak where there was no toolshed, no André, or even my own body, for my body was shattering into a thousand sparkling, glowing bits, falling slowly, and I held onto him, calling his name.

When, finally, I opened my eyes, he was smiling down at me. He began moving again, his mouth pressed against my ear, his breathing the only sound in the world. I was melting softness to his hardness. I caressed the long body, feeling his back, the muscles of his thighs and buttocks, moving, moving, and once again I was overtaken by that pooling, lifting ecstasy. My nails bit into him, and I cried out his name over and over, and when I fell, I clasped him. He kissed me, pushing back my moistened hair, and we moved again.

This time, the third, as I broke and shattered, he cried, “Love, love,” and we fell together.

Curled together, glued by passion and sweat, he pulled the edges of the cloak around us. We said nothing. There was everything to say, yet nothing to say. No promises could be made. No averments of love were necessary.

We drowsed, and when I woke, the candle sputtered low in the chamber stick. It was late.

We dressed. The glow was still in me, yet my skin was cold, and I twisted, trying to do the buttons of my bodice.

Giving up, I pulled on the paisley shawl I'd packed in the basket.

“The cape's for you,” I said.

He shook his head.

“Your white shirt'll show up in the dark. Besides, it's cold.” Picking up the cape, I shook it, and felt compelled to add, “It's not
his
. It's my brother's.”

“In that case, thank you, darling.”

I fished out the money purse.

“That,” he said, “I'll not take.”

“You'll need it.”

“No.”

“André, it's a present.”

He must've heard the note of anxiety in my voice. He leaned down, gazing into my face. Finally he asked, “You enjoy giving, don't you?”

“So do you.”

“No,” he said.

“But you left your big farm in America, You're giving your whole life.”

“It's the circumstances of my birth. I … something inside compels me. It's as if I'm driven by whips. Manon, don't idealize me. I have more faults than you, far more.”

“Don't be silly. I live a stupid, frivolous life.” I tried not to remember the reason behind my stupid frivolity. Loss. Grief. “Anyway, you'll hurt my feelings if you don't take the money. You don't want to do that, do you?”

He said nothing.

“You'll make me think you're a prig, good and noble in the extreme.”

At this he smiled. And took the purse, tucking it into his breeches pocket. “It'll buy bread,” he replied.

“Whatever.”

I left the basket and the candle in the toolshed. Many years from now, I thought, when mice have gnawed everything, even the wicker, when I'm old and my hair's true white, then maybe I'll have the courage to come back in here. After many, many years, maybe the memory of love won't hurt.

Clouds hid the moon, and I smiled. The covering darkness was what André needed.

We kissed; I watched him disappear, and then went into the stables to replace the key, moving slowly along the gravel path to the house. Lights showed in the downstairs hall. Lights, I guessed, for Jean-Pierre's return. The other windows at the back of the house were dark.

Chapter Four

On the hall table stood three silver chamber sticks. Taking mine by its handle, I held the wick to one of the flames burning in the large candelabrum. As I moved up the dark staircase, shadows receded and I had the sense of being enclosed in a golden bubble. I could still feel the pressure of André's long, hard body, the strength of his arms, still hear his breathing in my ear. The upstairs corridor was lined with a year of my watercolors. Birds, flowers, posthumous sketches of my daughter.

I glanced in on Aunt Thérèse. Her beruffled nightcap quivered with each small, soft snore. She slept peacefully.

No light showed around Jean-Pierre's door.

I went up the two steps to my room. Setting the chamber stick on the bureau, I made a purr and raised my arms, lowering them languorously.

A chair scraped.

Gasping, I turned.

The Comte stood in the corner. Lit only by my distant candle, he was shadowy, black, wide. In that first instant I thought it a trick of my eyesight that he wavered.

“My dear, I didn't mean to startle you.” His voice was thick, slurred.

Then I saw the glint of a goblet and decanter. He was drunk. Often he consumed great quantities of brandy, yet never before had I seen him drunk. He must've been sitting in the dark, waiting for me, drinking. My heart hammered with fear. The bed and armoire changed to lurking beasts.

His arm circled and he made an exaggerated bow. “Aren't you going to welcome me?” he asked.

Shock had taken the breath from me. I couldn't speak.

“Greet me, damn you!”

So this is how he is, drunk, I thought. Normally when angered, he grew more courteous; the physical rages of that short, brave boy had been bottled, serving to stiffen the Comte's elaborate code of etiquette. But, I thought, remember that first night. He'd lost every control in his disappointment at my lack of virtue. He knows, I thought. Has he really stooped to having me watched?

Don't show fear, I ordered myself. Moving around the room to light candles in the wall sconces, I said calmly, “Good evening, Comte. I thought Emperor Joseph's fête kept you in Versailles.”

The candles lit, I saw his stock was open, and his lace-ruffled shirt undone so the strong wrinkled neck showed, and the black-haired chest. His eyes were bloodshot, tormented. Despite my fear, I was touched with pity for him.

“I've no doubt,” he said, “that is exactly what you thought.”

A slurred, drunken parody of his usual irony. Again I ordered myself to show a calm exterior. Sitting at my dressing table, I picked up my comb.

“And you, my dear, where have you been?”

“Just walking in the garden.”

“A
fête champêtre
of your own, so to speak?”

“Yes.”

His steps unsteady, he came to me, lowering the shawl. “My dear, rid yourself of your pockmarked serving wench.”

“I'm happy with Izette.”

“A slut she was, a slut she remains. Like every trollop, she neglects buttons.”

“On the way upstairs I undid them.”

“You must be unwarrantedly weary.”

And with this his fingers bit into my shoulder until I thought the flesh would tear. I stifled my groan. The mirror darkly reflected his cynical face. Half-closed eyes glittered. Mouth opened. His expression was that of a man being tormented beyond the limits of human endurance, the expression I'd been too young to recognize when he'd brutalized me. Love again was crushing him between its torture stones. He released me, weaving back to his decanter, pouring himself another brandy.

He knows everything, I thought. Of course he knows He's too clever, too sensitive about me not to know I have a lover. He knows I've been with André. I pressed my knees together in an attempt to stop my legs from shaking.

“Tell me of your walk in the garden. My charming mistress, do your duty. Entertain me.”

I never could stand to watch a cat playing with a mouse. Raising the shawl back around my shoulders, I asked, “Why did you return, Comte?”

“I missed you. I desired to be with you. I left a king and an emperor to share your bed.” He closed his eyes for a moment. “Alas, you were—what was it?—walking in the garden. These past three hours you've been walking in the garden.”

That breaking twig! “Did you follow me?”

“I?” His nostrils flared. Pride crackled in his voice. “My dear, I?”

“But you know?”

He finished his brandy. “Yes. I know. Am I correct to assume your romantic garden interlude was shared with the fervent poet, the insufferable boy who so cleverly calls himself Égalité?”

“Yes,” I whispered in sudden fear that he'd stationed men around the house.

“You sat on the floor, eating and drinking, then fell back in the venal act.”

“If you didn't follow me—”

“Someone else did,” he said. “And, my dear, may I suggest you forget your sympathies for the serfs. Forget your poetic lover's youthful passion to aid the lower orders. Peasants are exactly where they belong. At the bottom of the heap. It's natural law, and the world is better because of such law.”

“Which of the servants?”

“The one you call Old Lucien, and treat so tenderly, always at pains to see he isn't overworked. The one you slip extra money, give warm clothes to.”

“He's my friend,” I said dully.

“Friends are from one's own class,” the Comte said. “Your
servant
, my dear, comes to me whenever he imagines you've misbehaved. As if I care how many of my gifts you turn over to your ne'er-do-well gambler of a brother.”

“Jean-Pierre's thoroughly scrupulous! And he knows nothing, nothing!”

“His ignorance delights me. But nonetheless, he's a hypochondriac who uses imaginary ailments to evade his duties.”

“No!”

“Yes,” the Comte said. “Whereas you, my dear, have always had the spirit to accept what you imagine your duties to be. Him. Your aunt. Your servants—”

“How much did you have to bribe Old Lucien?”

The Comte made a brief, ugly laugh.

“Bribe? I give him nothing. His pleasure is telling me. Like all his sort, he hungers to bring his betters down to his own level.”

All my life I'd loved Old Lucien. At home he'd been good to us, and though in Paris his liking for me had waned, I'd understood. My way of living reminded him of his old shame. But to spy on me! Gratuitously! How could he? My mind sorted out reasons, and the only one I came up with was the trick of categorizing. Just as the Comte believed every peasant a lesser breed, as André saw all the nobility as unfeeling parasites, and Izette saw every man as capable of every evil, so Old Lucien loathed every woman he thought a bad 'un.

But what was wrong with me? Why did I have to see each person as an individual? Why couldn't I slip each into a convenient pigeonhole to love or hate? The Comte, for example, was about to erupt into some unimaginable cruelty, so why did my heart ache with pity for his wrinkled neck and the pain glinting in his eyes?

“If you knew where we were,” I said, “why didn't you confront us?”

“A gentleman would never do that.”

“Send the police, then?” My voice trembled.

“You worry for the boy? Good. You should. The Governor of Police has twenty men after him.”

“Surrounding this house?”

“I've no way of knowing. But if you're asking if I requested such an order, the answer's no. I have no wish for my name to be linked with your precious Égalité.”

I sighed with relief.

“I have been curious about one matter,” the Comte said. “Is he the other candidate for fathering your little bastard?”

At this, pain cut through my chest, sharp pain that brought tears to my eyes.