No Sweeter Heaven: The Pascal Trilogy - Book 2 (32 page)

“He looks the kind,” Pierre noted. “It’s probably everything he can do to keep it tucked away when he’s working. You should have seen him today, Marie, stiff as a board when his wife came along.”

“It sounds like the old duke to me,” Monsieur Jamard said. “He was as lusty as the day was long—but once married, faithful to his wife,” he added loyally. “He was devoted to her.”

“And there you are,” Pierre said impatiently, giving up sucking his teeth and going to search for a toothpick. “If he was so faithful, uncle, then explain how he fathered a bastard child.” He dug in a drawer.

Monsieur Jamard gazed up at the chateau. “Perhaps when the duchess was with child?” he said, shrugging. “A man needs his release, after all, especially a man like that, and the duke would have been considerate enough not to take it with his wife.” He nodded in agreement with himself. “Yes, perhaps. Pascal LaMartine would be about the right age. And Henri LaMartine’s wife was pretty enough, as I remember, not that she mixed with us.”

“I don’t see why your uncle’s story is so farfetched,”

Marie said practically, drying her rough hands on a towel and handing her husband the toothpick he hadn’t been able to find.

“Come, Pierre, the coincidences are too many. Children fathered on women by men not their husbands are everywhere. What would be the surprise in this?” She settled into a chair with a sigh, happy to take the weight off her feet. “A nice, handsome duke taking his pleasure with a pretty woman living right there under his own roof? It would only be natural. No, I begin to think your uncle’s story might indeed be true.”

“Marie!” her husband said in an injured tone.

She ignored him, having now made up her mind on the matter. “I wonder if Henri LaMartine ever knew the truth about the child? How many do, eh?” Marie gave her husband another one of those superior smiles.

Pierre leaned over and squeezed his wife’s arm. “It had better not be the butcher I see in our children’s faces,” he said in mock threat.

Marie picked up a sock to darn out of her sewing basket and waved it at her husband. “Bah—Louis Valbert? Never. Now, Pascal LaMartine, he is another story,” she added with a saucy toss of her head.

Pierre wagged his finger at her. “Monsieur LaMartine is too busy with his own wife to pay any mind to you, Marie, insatiable or not. You’ll have to settle for what is in front of you.”

Marie lifted her eyes to the ceiling. “I could be waiting all year for what is in front of me.”

Monsieur Jamard ignored this marital byplay, deeply engrossed in solving the mystery before him. “Another glass of the wine, Pierre,” he commanded. “I need to think.”

Pierre obliged him, upending the bottle into his greatuncle’s glass. “But let me say this—no matter what light either of you tries to put on the matter, we don’t really know anything.”

Monsieur Jamard took a deep swallow of the coarse red wine. “You might not know anything, Pierre, which is not surprising, but I know this much—base-born he might be, but that is the duke’s son come back to the land, and it finally prospers.”

Pascal was still laughing when he and Lily got home that evening after checking on Emelie and her infant.

“By God, you were right, duchess,” he said, putting his medical bag by the door and greeting Bean. “It didn’t take long, did it?”

“Emelie went red in the face the minute you walked in the door. I thought I was going to collapse, trying to keep a straight face.”

“You didn’t keep a straight face,” he informed her. “Don’t think I missed the look the two of you exchanged when I examined her.”

“Well, can you imagine what she was thinking?” Lily said with an enormous smile.

“Far worse, I could see what her grandfather was thinking. I thought Jamard was going to stare me down when we arrived. You know, I noticed him up in the vineyard earlier, pointing down at us. I think our behavior shocked him.” He walked next door and pulled his shirt off, washing thoroughly.

“The other men approved,” Lily called, slicing tomatoes for a salad. “I saw the grins when I left.”

Pascal stuck his head out of the door. “Didn’t I tell you?” he said, drying himself with a towel. “I’ve become a hero. The envy of Saint-Simon. The Don Juan of the Perigord.”

“Well, of the C6tes de Franc, at least,” Lily said.

Pascal tossed the towel away and strode into the room. He slipped his arms around Lily’s waist, drawing her back against his bare chest. “What?” he murmured against the tender hollow just behind her ear. “Are you saying that I’m not the greatest chevalier in all of France?”

Lily looked at him over her shoulder. “The C6tes de Franc is quite large enough. Your head is swelling, chevalier.”

“Not my head, duchess,” he said with a muffled laugh and pulled her even closer, pushing his hips against her buttocks. Lily sighed, and he cupped her breasts, stroking them with his thumbs, then slipped one hand down the front of her dress to the juncture of her legs, pressing against her with his fingers until she trembled and her legs relaxed. “I want you,” he murmured against her ear, caressing her through her dress. “I’ve been thinking about you all day.”

“What about dinner?” she asked, her voice suddenly all smoky and soft, just as he knew her eyes would be. Good. She wanted him too.

“Dinner can wait,” he said. “I can’t—your chevalier is in a state of intense need, and you can hold yourself responsible—you didn’t have to bring me a picnic and remind me.”

Lily laughed deep in her throat—a womanly sound, full of promise.

He picked her up in his arms and carried her up the stairs like a victor with his prize, stopping only to kiss her midway. Depositing her on the bed, he proceeded to strip her, one piece of clothing at a time, stripping himself as he went, then fell onto the bed with her, kissing every available inch of skin. “Mmm, soft, sweet duchess,” he said, nuzzling her breasts, slipping his fingers into her, trembling as Lily, bold Lily, took him in her hand and stroked him in the same rhythm.

They were both learning quickly. All sorts of possibilities were occurring to him.

He rolled onto his back, and sat her up over his hips. She looked down at him in question, her face soft and open, receptive. He reached up and undid the ribbon holding her hair back, spreading her lush hair over her shoulders, the curling ends brushing her breasts.

It was no effort to lift his head and take Lily’s breast in his mouth, licking and pulling and nipping until she squirmed. He lifted her by the waist and fitted her over his erect shaft, sliding her down onto him.

Lily’s eyes widened, and Pascal grinned up at her. “You wanted a stallion, duchess. Another time I’ll figure out how to take you like one, don’t think I won’t, but now it’s your turn. I’m all yours. Do with your stallion as you will.”

She smiled then, the smile of a seductress. She tentatively moved on him, and he shut his eyes for a moment, handing himself over to her, relinquishing all control.

She put her hands on his chest, adjusting, testing her weight, finding her balance, and then she began to rock, slowly at first, then faster, her lip caught between her teeth as she concentrated, her eyes half closed, her full breasts shivering just over his face. He couldn’t help taking advantage of that.

“Ah, Lily,” he moaned, his breath coming in hard pants, trying to hold on for her. His hands circled her hips, holding her, steadying her as she moved up and down on him, driving him to the edge.

Her eyes shut and her brow furrowed, and she sank down on him all the way, crying out, sharp high little cries that matched the rhythm of her pulsing flesh. His hips jerked, and he thrust against her hard, pumping his seed into her, groaning against the exquisite agony of release, pulling her down against him full length and kissing her, rolling her onto her side, his hands twining in her hair, thinking for the hundredth time in twenty-four hours that he was the luckiest man alive.

Lily rested against him, silent, content. He drifted, equally content. But after ten minutes or so, she finally spoke.

“Well … maybe I’ll grant you the Perigord,” she said grudgingly. “But all of France is really going too far.”

Pascal, who had gone in another direction entirely, laughed softly. “Don’t draw any conclusions yet, sweetheart. Give me a little time and I’ll be the best chevalier in all of Europe.”

“Let me know when you take Asia,” she said, smiling against his arm.

“I won’t have to. You can take Asia for yourself. I’ve just conceded you a corner of Tibet, in fact. A very nice corner. Himalayan—lots of peaks and valleys.”

Lily pulled him over on top of her. “You might as well try for the Swiss Alps, Monsieur Chevalier.”

He did.

Lily’s strategy served its purpose. Over the next ten days Pascal noticed the return of bawdiness around him, himself the target on a few occasions. He was also treated with a new deference that he imagined was a holdover from Joseph-Jean’s birth, but since the evening surgery sessions went as usual, he decided that no one was more skittish for the initial rumors. Privately he did his best to live up to the reputation Lily had established for him. It was no hardship.

Life was good, fulfilled, contented. Yet there was an issue that sorely aggravated him—that of Jean-Jacques. He’d had not one summons, not one word from the man. A continuous party had been raging up at the Chateau de Saint-Simon for over a week, carriages coming and going up and down the hill with monotonous regularity.

Lily had not heard a thing from her brother either—hardly surprising, given what the fool had said to her on her last ill-advised visit. Lily had told Pascal all about it, and it had been all he could do to keep from going up to the chateau and tearing Jean-Jacques apart.

Still, in many ways it was just as well that the man stayed away from Lily so as not to upset her further. It angered Pascal nevertheless. It also angered him that Jean-Jacques had given no thought to paying his debts.

He threw down his pen in frustration. Tomorrow was payday. The books were balanced properly, but money was owed everywhere. Pascal was down to the end of his own resources and would be hard-pressed to make this week’s payroll. Money would be plentiful once the harvest came in, but there was another fortnight to go before that began, another two weeks after that before it was completed. There was a wine-maker to be hired, the winery to be scoured out, the vats made ready.

Pascal had had enough.

It was four in the afternoon, and he imagined that Jean-Jacques would have to be out of bed by now. There was always the possibility that he’d gone back to bed in order to prepare for the excesses of the evening. Pascal had heard all about those, via the local gossip. The daughters and wives who’d been employed at the chateau since Jean-Jacques’s return had a good deal to say, most of it scandalous, and it went straight into the men’s ears and back out into the vineyard.

Oh, yes, Pascal was well informed.

He picked up the books and glanced out the back door. Lily was in the vegetable garden, re-staking the tomato plants. They’d borne so much fruit that they were sagging under their own weight. She looked happy in her work.

“I’m going out for a while, duchess,” he said, walking over to her and leaning on the fence with his free arm.

Lily stood and brushed off her hands. She had a streak of dirt on her nose, and little wisps of hair had escaped from her braid. “Will you be back for supper?”

He leaned a little further over and dropped a kiss on her lovely, ripe lips. “Long before, I should think. What are we having? “

“Oh, Monsieur Valbert dropped by a ham earlier.” Lily brushed her hair off her face, leaving another streak of dirt on her cheek. “He said he’s feeling much better.”

“Hmm,” Pascal said, thinking Lily looked utterly adorable, “I would imagine he is. But you wait and see—the minute he’s recovered, he’ll go straight back to butter and cream and all the things that made him sick in the first place.”

“Monsieur’s eating habits will keep us in meat for months,” Lily said, smiling up at him.

“Probably.” He kissed her again. “Where’s Bean?”

“She went bounding off after a rabbit—tomorrow’s dinner if she remembers to bring it back.”

“Thank God for Bean. Better her than me,” he said, smoothing her hair off her face.

“I wouldn’t worry,” Lily said dryly. “Between Bean and the butcher’s gallbladder we’re doing very well.”

“We are indeed, duchess. We are indeed. I’ll see you later.” Pascal stole one more kiss, then headed up the hill, accounts in hand.

People waved to him as he passed, calling out greetings. He waved in reply, smiled, called back, but his mind was on his objective and his temper was rising with every step that he took toward the chateau.

A proper butler in full regalia opened the door. “Monsieur?” he said, looking Pascal up and down, taking in the shirtsleeves, the simple dress. Pascal hadn’t bothered with a jacket.

“I have come to see the duke on his business. I am LaMartine, his
regisseur.”

The butler looked surprised. “Ah, Monsieur LaMartine—yes, of course. However, the duke is busy. I do not know when—”

“Now!” Pascal demanded, his voice even enough but frigid with anger as he noticed that the hall had already been beautifully refurbished. “Now,” he repeated.

The butler was no match for Pascal. He stood aside and let him in, crossing the hall to the library.

“Monsieur le Due,” he said, opening the door, and Pascal could see clearly inside.

Jean-Jacques lounged in a chair, his feet propped up on a stool, a glass of cognac in his hand. He was addressing a caustic comment about one of his guests to a portly, overdressed gentleman, who snickered in return.

Pascal took in the gentleman with an instant, sick, and violent recognition. Unfortunately, from the look of things it appeared that Jean-Jacques had fallen under the unholy influence of Maurice, Comte de Passy. Pascal had met him on a visit Passy had made to England five years earlier, although he doubted the comte would remember him. He would have had little reason to.

Pascal, on the other hand, would never forget the man. He suppressed a shiver of distaste. A hundred years would be nowhere near long enough to erase that particular memory.

Passy was a man of strong influence, capable of making or destroying reputations—and equally capable of destroying souls. Looking into his history in the year that followed, Pascal had learned more about the man than he cared to know. None of it augured well for Jean-Jacques.

If this was the man Lily had described when she’d gone up to see her brother, it was little wonder Jean-Jacques had reacted as he had to her. Passy would have turned Jean-Jacques into an object of ridicule in no time. His presence explained a great many things about Jean-Jacques’s behavior.

“Monsieur le Due,” the butler said again, clearing his throat.

“What is it now?” Jean-Jacques said with irritation. “I told you I do not wish to be disturbed.” He didn’t bother turning around.

“But there is a gentleman…”

Pascal touched him on the shoulder and nodded toward the door. The butler backed away, and Pascal shut the door behind him.

“Monsieur le Due,” he said coolly. “I wish to speak with you. Privately, if you please.”

Jean-Jacques’s head snapped around. “You!” he said, dropping his feet to the floor with a thud. “How dare you come in here like this?”

“Your butler, being a sensible man, let me in. I explained that I was here on your own urgent business. He obviously has a better-developed sense for your business than you have.”

“Who is this impertinent devil?” Passy demanded, his complexion turning even more florid than usual.

“LaMartine, my steward,” Jean-Jacques replied, waving a lazy hand in Pascal’s direction. “Forgive him. What he lacks in manners he makes up for with an overinflated sense of his own importance.”

“Do I?” Pascal said indifferently. “Perhaps it’s your underinflated sense of responsibility that’s the cause for that. Someone needs to look after Saint-Simon, given that you’ve shown no interest.”

“How
dare
you speak to the duke in such a manner?” Passy spluttered.

Pascal flicked a glance in his direction. “This is no affair of yours, monsieur.”

“Monsieur LaMartine,” Jean-Jacques snapped, “you address the Comte de Passy!”

“Good day.” Pascal briefly inclined his head and turned back to his brother-in-law. “What I have to say to you regards your estate. It concerns no one else.”

“You may speak in front of the comte. Get on with it, and let me get back to my conversation.”

Pascal looked at Jean-Jacques more closely, and with mounting concern as he noted his enlarged pupils, his lethargy. “Very well,” he said, wondering how long Jean-Jacques had been imbibing opiated wine. “You and I had an agreement regarding your vineyards. You have not yet honored it.”

“Things have changed,” Jean-Jacques said with a shrug.

“You wrote me two months ago stating that you had acquired a large sum of money to put into the estate and that you were returning shortly. You did not.”

“I was not aware that I had to answer to you, monsieur.” Jean-Jacques took another sip of cognac, then dangled the glass between finger and thumb, looking down into it as if bored.

“As your steward, I have been acting on your behalf as you instructed me,” Pascal said. “That was as of the third week of May. It is now the end of August, and the merchants have yet to be paid. You have been back for ten days, and still I have heard nothing from you. Why?”

Jean-Jacques shrugged again. “I have been busy.”

“Have you?” Pascal said caustically. “Yes, I suppose that entertaining until all hours must be exhausting.”

“What would you know about it, you—you peasant.” He looked Pascal up and down, his eyes heavy with insult. “Can you not even dress properly when you come to see me? And speaking of that…”

“Yes, speaking of that,” Pascal said, his eyes sparking with real anger, the subject of Lily hanging between them. “You were going to say?”

Jean-Jacques cast a look at Passy, who was listening carefully to every word. “Speaking of that,” he said feebly, “how dare you come barging in here?”

“I dare because I have a job to do—a job I accepted on certain conditions, to which you agreed.” Pascal walked over and tossed the books down on the desk. “You might look through these, and then I would appreciate a draft for the money outstanding. There are people who need to be paid, myself included.”

“Oh?” Jean-Jacques said with a cynical smile.

Pascal looked down at the toe of his boot for a moment, thinking he’d like to take a hammer to Jean-Jacques’s opiated head. “Yes,” he said, when the immediate desire had passed. “I believe I explained my financial position to you when we first met? It has not changed, other than that my pockets are even emptier than they were before. That is a result of my paying your employees’ salaries for you in your absence.”

“More fool you,” Jean-Jacques said. “I told you to use credit.”

Pascal looked around the room, more finely appointed than before, just as the huge hall had been. “Credit might buy things, but it will not put food on the table at the end of a hard day. I cannot pay men on credit.”

He was well aware that Passy’s intense gaze was focused solely on him. He hoped to God he looked like the peasant Jean-Jacques had accused him of being.

“Very well,” Jean-Jacques said, idly inspecting his fingernails, “leave the books there. I will attend to them later.”

“I think not. I think it would be best if you attended to them immediately.”

Jean-Jacques half rose out of his chair.
“You
think? Who do you think you are?”

Pascal rubbed his lower lip with his thumb, then gave Jean-Jacques a half-smile, calculated to send him right back into his chair. He’d learned a little more at Nicholas’s knee than how to swear. He was certain that Jean-Jacques didn’t want Passy to know that Lily was the woman Passy had seen outside the chateau the previous week. He was also certain that Jean-Jacques didn’t want Passy to know that Pascal was his brother-in-law.

Pascal felt exactly the same way. There was fuel there for some seriously malicious mischief on Passy’s part. He’d rather that Lily be left out of Passy’s regard altogether, but Jean-Jacques didn’t know that, and it made a fine bargaining chip.

“I am a married man, responsible for my wife’s welfare,” he said. “My wife is only one among many who will be happy for a meal on the table tomorrow night,” Pascal said. “Surely you wouldn’t want her to go hungry?”

Passy’s head turned from one to the other, his eyes narrowing as he picked up the subtle undercurrents running between the two men.

“Very well,” Jean-Jacques said, nervously rubbing a finger over the top of his glass. “I’ll pay you. I’ll pay you what I owe you and the others up until now, but not a franc more for those miserable vineyards.”

Pascal went very still. “What do you mean, not a franc more? Surely you intend to honor your commitment?”

“I made an agreement out of desperation,” Jean-Jacques said, not meeting Pascal’s eyes. “I am no longer desperate, and there is no point in throwing away good money after bad on a crop I won’t see a decent profit from for years, if ever.”

Pascal looked at him hard. “You need your crop for future income, no matter how much money you have on hand now. You can’t afford to squander it.”

“I don’t need my crop in the least,” Jean-Jacques said.

Pascal frowned. “Then how do you intend to pay back your loan?”

Passy laughed nastily. “Go on, tell him, Jean-Jacques. Put him out of his misery. Tell the arrogant fool, then throw him out into the streets.”

Jean-Jacques smiled smugly and rested his feet back on the stool. “I didn’t need the banks. I did it all on my own.”

“Did what?” Pascal asked warily. “Just what—exactly—did you do?”

“I won a fortune,” he replied, taking another sip of cognac from the snifter. “No interest to pay, no debt incurred. I am a rich man and have no further need of you or of anyone. I certainly have no need of these damned vineyards.”

Jean-Jacques might just as well have delivered a blow to Pascal’s stomach. The effect was the same. He sank into a chair uninvited, his head lowered, trying to catch his breath. “Saint-Simon?” he said, looking up after a minute, his voice shaking with an effort at control. “Your stake was Saint-Simon?”

Jean-Jacques shrugged. “What else? What else was there? It wasn’t doing me any good as it was.”

“You risked the entire estate on the toss of a coin or the roll of the dice—”

“No, it was cards,” Jean-Jacques said, lolling back in his chair. “Lady Luck was watching over my shoulder. I couldn’t go wrong.”

It was too much for Pascal—control went straight out the window. “I don’t give a damn what it was,” he shouted, slamming his fist on the arm of the chair. “You risked everything without the first thought to anything but yourself! Did you once think of the people? They have a heritage, too, a history of their own, all wrapped up with this chateau and its dukes, and for the last thirty years their dukes have served them poorly indeed!”