The General's Mistress (14 page)

D
uring the long months when I’d awaited Victor in the fall, I had written to my mother. It was nothing really, just a quick note posted from Paris, saying that I lived and that I was well. There was no reply, but I had not expected one. I had not given her an address.

Now, settling into my own beautiful house in Passy, I wrote to my cousin Louisa. I knew Louisa’s discretion. I had relied on it for years when my mother was ill. I told her that I was in Paris, living with a generous and powerful protector, and that I had no intention of ever returning to Holland or to Jan.

Her response reached me on the day of Moreau’s fête. I knew better than to open it but I did anyway.

I expected remonstrances and anger, but instead she told me that my sons were well, and that Francis was safely recovered from a bout of coughing that had kept him ill through Christmas.
Christmas,
I thought.
In places where there is not the Temple of Reason, where the church still exists, there is Christmas.
We had had none. There’d been balls and pageants galore, theater productions and revels, but no Christmas. Suddenly I longed for snow
and happy children, for midnight choirs and all the trimmings I had lacked.

Have always lacked,
I said to myself sternly.
It is not as though when you were a child in Italy, anyone took you to church. Or that Carnivale with its masks and licentiousness was not more to your parents’ taste than miracles and choirs. And you never saw a drift of snow until you were nine years old and crossed Grand-Saint-Bernard.

Jan says he will never divorce you. He and his family are adamant on that. He says that you will come crawling home when your money runs out. And that when you do, he will have you confined in the country for the rest of your life, with a strict nurse and a bottle of laudanum for company. He says you are mad. He has filed papers with the government of France to have you extradited to Holland.

That was no more or less than I had expected. But it was the next line that made tears start in my eyes.

He has told the children that you are dead.

Among the Marvelous

M
oreau’s fête was the last week in February. I was a nervous wreck. While of course I had played hostess for Jan for years, I had never planned any sort of social occasion in Paris, and I was keenly aware of how my efforts would reflect on Victor. The wine, the food, the musicians, everything necessary for a simple party took weeks to prepare. In the end, I was beside myself over the flowers. The ones I had wanted were not available, and instead I had gray classical urns, meant to hold flowers outdoors on a terrace, filled with cherry branches forced to bloom early. The effect was both rustic and lovely, and the spare shapes seemed almost opulent in Victor’s understated rooms.

The fête went well enough. As I had expected, I did not enjoy myself much. It is far easier to be the guest than the hostess.

I did, however, at last meet Barras. He was of medium height, with brown hair and a handsome face of the sort that every young lawyer aspires to, open and inventive without any trace of cynicism or interest. He took my hand politely and bent over it, saying every conventional thing, making compliment to my clothing and décor. And five minutes later I found it completely impossible to remember a word he had said.

“You are right, Victor,” I said when I passed close to him later, “Barras is a cipher.”

Victor leaned forward against my arm. “He says everything that everyone wants to hear, and yet says nothing.”

I nodded. “But his lady . . .”

Madame Bonaparte had arrived with Barras as usual. She might be married to another, but it seemed in the capital that nothing whatsoever had changed. Whether or not it had changed in the bedchamber was anyone’s guess. Personally, I couldn’t imagine Barras bothering. But clearly he had loved her once, or at least lusted after her.

She came and joined me greeting arrivals near the door. “Anything interesting?” she asked.

I shook my head and extended my hand to a random officer who had turned up. “Yes, I too am enchanted. No, Joséphine, not a thing.”

She waited until the officer had turned away. Her perceptive brown eyes lingered on me. “Something is wrong,” she said. “I see it in your eyes.”

“It is just a letter I received earlier,” I said. “Nothing of consequence.” I feared that my voice betrayed me.

It did. She put her hand on my arm. “Do you want to go somewhere quiet and tell me of it?”

I shook my head. “I cannot leave the door. I should have known better than to open the letter before the party.”

“My husband sends me upsetting letters often,” she said, smiling and nodding to a gentleman who had just come in. “I can’t read them when I am to appear anywhere either.”

“Does he scold you?” I asked.

“No,” she said, her head turning slightly away as she followed the progress of a group with her eyes. “He tells me all of his unrequited passion.”

“I think I would prefer those letters,” I said.

Thérèse Tallien was coming up the steps on the arm of the banker reputed to be her current lover. Her gown was pure white and her stole was ermine, and a fortune in diamonds dazzled around her neck.

Joséphine leaned forward. “Good Lord, Thérèse! Where in the world did they come from?”

Thérèse gestured to the silent banker, who wore a small smirk. “From my dear friend. They once belonged to Diane de Poitiers, you know.”

“Really?”

“Not crown jewels, then,” I said rudely.

Thérèse looked at me, and her eyes were like diamonds themselves. “I should never aspire to a crown. It’s too easy to lose one’s head.” She spread her fan carelessly. “Unlike Joséphine, who had some Creole fortune-teller inform her that she was going to be a queen.”

Joséphine blushed. “Thérèse, I should never have told you that silly twaddle. You know those things are games and parlor tricks.”

“Not always,” I said. “I have a deck of cards and they seem to work for me.”

Thérèse smiled. “Well, I shall have to get you to tell my fortune someday. And tell me if there is love in it.”

“There must be both love and generosity,” Joséphine said, graciously gesturing to the banker. “After all, you are the luckiest of women to have found such a friend.”

“Indeed,” Thérèse said, taking his arm and sweeping into the room.

Joséphine shrugged.

“I thought she was your dear friend,” I said.

“She is. But she must always conquer all. It’s her way.” Joséphine gestured to the footman to close the door. “It’s getting cold, and most of the guests are here.”

T
hat night after the fête, I spread the cards on the table upstairs in the guest room I used. I put them in three piles, as Louisa had taught me.

Who. Joséphine. The Queen of Chalices sat in her garden surrounded by roses, a woman of sensibility and kindness. Clear enough.

How. The Six of Staves, six rods crossed on a white background. Conflict, war, swift changes.

Why. The Chariot.

I mussed the cards and scattered them as I heard the door open. Victor would laugh at me. “I’m coming, dearest,” I said.

There was a low, throaty laugh that was nothing like Victor’s. Thérèse stood in the doorway regarding me. “How nice of you to greet me that way!”

I stood up, folding the cards back together.

“So you are playing with your little cards?” Thérèse walked toward me, her fan swinging on its strings. “Do they tell you what waits for you?”

I didn’t answer. She lifted the fan. The sticks were heavy ivory. For all her manner, she was several inches shorter than I was. For a moment I thought she was going to strike me across the face with it, but she hesitated. “Victor will object if I mark you,” she said.

“So would I,” I said. “Moreau has never struck me, and that does not appeal to me in the slightest.”

Her eyes narrowed. “How do you know it doesn’t if you haven’t tried it? Victor may be very good, but I am better.”

I took a step back. “I do not plan to be in a position to know,” I said.

Instead of being insulted, she smiled. “I see that Victor has taught you saucy protest. Are you entirely his creature?”

“I am his friend,” I said. “I do not belong to him.”

“Don’t you?” Thérèse spread her hands. “You live in his house, wear the clothes he buys, eat his food. You are as much a pet as my little dog. Only prettier and more expensive.”

I put my head to the side and looked at her. “And this is supposed to make me like you? I’m unclear on how insulting me is supposed to make me want to sleep with you.”

She laughed, a clear, silvery laugh. “Oh dear! Victor does have more than he bargained for in you, doesn’t he? Clearly I’m trying the wrong tack. Does he woo you with sweet words and presents? I imagine he’s good at that, hypocrite that he is.”

“He is kind to me and treats me with respect,” I said. “Whether or not that is hypocrisy, I don’t know.”

She opened her fan. “Of course it is, my dear. You don’t have anything he wants. Victor is a master at flattery and idle banter, among other things. Don’t tell me that you take his lavish compliments seriously?”

“I don’t,” I said, but it hurt. No one had ever told me I was lovely before, nor treated me as though my every wish were important to him.

“He is a man. And underneath it all, they are the same. They’re pricks.” She raised her fan to her lips, pursed provocatively. “And they all want the same thing. Think about it,” she said, and left the room.

I had sat down and was shuffling the cards over and over when Victor came in a few minutes later. “That’s the last of them,” he said. “Thérèse practically had to be carried out to her carriage. I thought she was planning to stay all night.”

“She was,” I said, “with me.”

Victor came and put his hand on my shoulder. “So that’s how it is.”

I nodded.

“You seem very downcast for a woman who just had a great social triumph,” he said. “Is something troubling you?”

“No,” I said.

“Thérèse?”

It was a question I could answer. “She wanted to strike me. Does she do that? For pleasure, I mean?”

“And it does not appeal to you?” I felt him bend over me, his warmth against my back through the thin silk of my dress.

I shook my head.

“Nor to me,” he said. “Different tastes. There are women who like that kind of mastery. It’s never particularly appealed to me. People who have to enforce their will with whips usually can’t control themselves. I have no respect for that kind of weakness.”

“And yet you like me to lose control,” I said slowly. “To be entirely without pretense or thought.”

“That’s different,” he said. His hand was warm on my shoulder.

“Because I am a woman?” I asked.

“My dear, there is nothing weak about you,” he said. “Nothing whatsoever. I am quite aware that a man who tames a tiger has only himself to blame if it bites his hand off.”

I turned my head so that my cheek rested against his hand. “Victor, I don’t want to hurt you. And I can’t imagine that I could. So I don’t understand what she wants.”

“Who knows? To score off me? To get you into her bedchamber? She is the original Marquise de Merteuil.”

“And what am I?” I asked him, and was appalled to find myself almost crying. “Nothing, really. A woman with no future and no past. My husband has filed papers to have me extradited to Holland on the grounds that I am mad!”

“Is that all?” Victor drew me to my feet, his arm about
my waist. “My dear, you have nothing to fear from that oaf. I promised you that you would be safe here, and I keep my word. This extradition will come to nothing, documents misplaced somewhere, a lady who cannot be found. After all, who has ever heard of Madame Ringeling?”

I let out a deep breath. I did not like to be afraid, but this frightened me to the core. “You promise?”

“I promise,” Victor said gravely. “You have nothing to fear from these papers. I will take care of you.”