The General's Mistress (9 page)

“Is this what you do?” he asked. “Alone in your room at night? When your idiot husband has gone to bed? Is this how you touch yourself?”

I closed my eyes and did not answer.

Victor laughed, a soft, dangerous sound. “You are simply begging to be corrupted. It’s very easy. Tell me that you like it.”

“Yes,” I said, though my breath caught in my throat.

He laughed again, and then I felt his lips brush my breast. I strained upward after them.

I opened my eyes to see him looking down at me. His eyes were dark with passion, but he was still in control. “Not so quickly. Tell me what you want. Don’t just thrust your nipples at me.”

I felt myself turning red. “No.”

“No?” He played with the soft tissues between my legs lazily, separating and stroking each part. “I won’t do it unless you tell me.”

“I want . . . you to kiss me . . . there. . . .” I said.

“Where?”

“My breast,” I gasped.

He smiled. “Very good.” He leaned down and took my nipple in his mouth, teasing at it with his tongue, drawing it almost painfully.

I moaned and my back arched involuntarily, my pearl against his hand.

I felt him laugh against my breast. And I felt his hardness against my leg. I was scoring points too. Sooner or later he must take what he wanted. Could I make him? Could I make him lose this infuriating control?

One finger penetrated me, and I almost forgot the thought. My hand clawed at his cravat, at his throat, but he stopped me, taking my wrist with his other hand and shifting his weight to kneel between my knees.

“Not so fast,” Victor said. “You will do what I want. And what I want is to hear you beg for release.”

I gasped. “I can’t. I’ll never . . .”

“Never is a very long time. Do you really think you won’t if I keep this up? Do you really think that in an hour or however long it takes, you won’t come begging like a whore, getting off in full view of me?”

His words were a spur, and I ground against him. I didn’t care. I didn’t care about anything.

“You’re going to come for me, my dear. And you’re going to ask for it.”

I moaned.

He moved his fingers away. “Ask me for it.”

“Victor . . .”

“Ask me for it.”

I pumped my hips, trying to get his hand back where it had been. “Please.”

“Ask me to let you come.” His hand on my wrist was steel.

“Let me come,” I whispered. “Victor, please!”

He thrust his hand down, rubbing where I wanted it most. “Say, ‘I am a whore. I am a whore and I want you to make me come.’”

“I am a whore and I want you to make me come.” The pressure was almost unbearable. I felt suspended, timeless. I was nothing but a knot of craving.

“I am not going to stop until you do,” he said calmly. “You need not worry that you will be unsatisfied. I am going to watch you squirm and writhe with my fingers inside you until you finish.”

I screamed and came against his hand. Lights flashed and my head swam, my entire being locked in a convulsion that seemed to come from somewhere deep within. I lay back against the arm of the divan. I could hardly see.

And then he thrust into me, into tissues already overstimulated. My back arched and I almost fell, falling, falling out of the world, sealed together, my body moving against him.

He came hard and lay across me, discipline pushed to the limit. His soft dark hair was against my face, his forehead covered in sweat, our bodies still joined.

I took one breath and then another. And then another.

He stirred, and for a moment his eyes were half-veiled.

“My God,” I said.

He smiled, and it was the same mocking poise again. “I doubt if God has anything to do with it.” He got up carefully. Despite his best efforts, his clothes were in some disarray.

I tried to sit up. My back hurt from the uncomfortable
position, and my body felt more than sensitive. I moaned involuntarily as my swollen nether lips touched the divan.

Victor looked at me and raised an eyebrow. “That was quite something.”

“Yes,” I said.

He leaned over me again, parting my legs and touching the tender skin that had just brushed the cloth. I leaned back against his arm.

“Again,” he said, and his hand moved on me.

I
awoke the next morning in the Blue Room. I stretched luxuriously on the heavy linen sheets. I was stiff and sore, but completely, utterly relaxed. I turned my head. Light came in under the curtains, enough to tell me it was full daylight. The fire was dead and the room was a little chilly, but not cold. Or perhaps it was just that I was naked.

There was a knock. I sat up, pulling the sheet and duvet up over my breasts. “Yes?”

A young chambermaid carrying a bucket of water bobbed a curtsy in the doorway. “Madame, the general thought that you might like a bath.”

“Come in,” I said. “I would like one very much.” The prospect was absolutely delightful. Even more delightful was the idea that he had thought of it, that he had considered my comfort. I looked for my hairpins. I heard the splashing as she poured the water into the tub in the dressing room. “Is the general still here?”

She came out with the empty bucket. “No, Madame. He said that he has a great deal of work to do today. But he told us that we are to do anything you request, and he left a purse with Marcel if you wish to go to the shops today, since your clothes haven’t arrived yet.”

A nice sensibility, I thought, to leave the purse with the valet for shopping, rather than handing it to me as though it were my price. But I really did want some clothes, at least a clean chemise. My trunks might take three or four days yet. And besides, as he had said, many of my clothes were rather modest.

While the chambermaid finished filling the bath, I looked around the dressing room again. There was plain soap, but no scented soap or oils. For some reason, this pleased me enormously. If women stayed here, it was not often enough to leave their things. Or else Moreau had fastidiously removed them.

“Is there anything else you would like, Madame?” she asked.

“In three-quarters of an hour, I would like coffee with cream, with bread and butter and jam,” I said. “I will take it in here. Also, please brush and hang my dress.”

She nodded. “Of course, Madame.”

I settled into the warm water gratefully as she left. I did not love him. I wasn’t sure if I even liked him. Yet twice this morning he had thought of my comfort and of my feelings. That was a truly novel experience.

He had certainly seemed attuned to my feelings last night, I thought, dreamily splashing myself with water, as though my excitement were the spur to his passion. In my admittedly limited previous experience, men scarcely required that. The mere sight of a breast or a thigh was enough to transport them. My active participation was hardly required. And yet Moreau had gone to vast pains to make me want him.

I didn’t know if I liked him, but I certainly desired him. I could admit that to myself.

I had perhaps exaggerated his age to my cousin Maria. He was closer to thirty-five than forty, and if he was not extravagantly handsome, he was certainly good-looking. If he was not tall, he was certainly well made, with the lean body of a man
who spent his days in great activity and was abstemious with both wine and food.

Discipline,
I thought.
He is about discipline and mastery over himself. That is the key to Moreau. And so perhaps what he craves is its opposite humor, utter abandonment? Is that what completes him?

I stretched back in the water. Perhaps I would not mind that at all under his cool tutelage.

A New Life

T
hus I entered into a period of my life that I liked far better than I had expected. I lived in the house in utter respectability, directing the servants as though I were the lady of the house and doing as I wished. As soon as he learned that I was not a spendthrift, Moreau had no qualms about turning over the running of the household to me, and I was meticulous about keeping his books separate from mine, and his money separate from the money that he gave me. He inspected his own books regularly, and was as thorough and conscientious in that as in everything. My bookkeeping earned a nod of approval, as it never had from Jan.

“I see that you know something of finance, Madame,” he said.

“It’s common sense,” I replied. “And good taste.”

“You do have good taste,” he said.

While my taste in gowns was somewhat expensive, it was undeniably good, and if I wore things that previously I would have found too revealing for Madame Ringeling, they were not too revealing for Madame St. Elme.

I cultivated her as I had Charles, considering character and taste. Ida St. Elme did not wear pale pinks and yellows. She wore blue in every shade, from palest dawn to dark sapphire that brought out the color of her eyes. Her new evening gown was of dark blue-purple satin that plunged deeply in the front, with a high-boned corset that made the most of those attributes Moreau appreciated. Her riding clothes were almost navy, a
man’s coat and buff trousers with a little tricorne with a rakish plume. And her nightclothes . . . Madame St. Elme did not usually wear nightclothes, with the exception of a wrapper of blue and white toile.

There was one very delicate chemise, of the thinnest, lightest lawn with fine lace, the sort of chemise that brides wore. I wore it ripped and torn, one long rent up the side and the lace dangling at the throat, little pink ribbons shredded and trailing. It was the very picture of innocence outraged. When he saw it, Moreau swallowed hard, and a look came over his face that I had waited for.

I wore it pleading at his feet, lavishing him with tears that were half real, begging and sobbing in two languages. And of course he did not fail me.

Afterward, for once we lay quiet together. The candles had burned out. His breathing was even and he had forgotten to send me back to my room. I closed my eyes and was almost asleep when I felt his arm around me.

“My dear,” he said quietly. “That was too real.”

I licked my swollen lips. “It was,” I said. “Too close.” There was a long silence. “I was that sort of bride once.”

His hand stroked my hair softly and methodically. “So I had guessed. How old were you?”

“Twelve,” I said. It was very quiet in the room. Outside, the town and camp were quiet. Far off, a dog barked. “I had a large dowry. Jan talked me into eloping with him, into running away to an inn over the border.” Victor’s hands were not still, moving softly against my hair. “You can guess what happened then. After that, I had to marry him, even though I no longer wanted to.”

“And so you had that costume made up? Not to please me.”

“No,” I said. I thought about it. For some reason, thinking
was easier around him. If my passion was a spark to his, his thoughts were a spark to mine. “To change the past. To make it as it should have been. If I had married someone . . . different.”

His arm tightened around me for a moment, but his voice was still light. “Marriage is a failed institution, my dear. People should stay together only as long as they wish, for whatever reasons they wish.”

“That isn’t practical,” I said, “if women have no place to go, and no way to make their way in the world without men. There is no way not to belong to men.”

“You don’t belong to me,” he said.

“Don’t I?”

Victor spread his hand on my naked hip. The rags of the chemise were bunched around my waist. “Do you? You could leave at any time. There are no walls or locks to stop you. You have ample funds and the ability to travel. There is nothing that prevents you from simply walking away. Except, of course, for your desire. There are no chains that are stronger than desire.”

“Even desire wanes,” I said.

“So it does.” His hand slid down my leg and around, into the warm cleft of my buttocks. “And whether yours or mine will cool first, I don’t know.” He lifted one of the shredded ribbons. “But you will not be the worse for having known me.”

He sat up and lifted the torn chemise over my head and pitched it on the floor. “I don’t think I care for that game particularly. That is enough of that.”