Hearts Beguiled

by Penelope Williamson

  One day a sudden thought struck him and he went running to Maman to share it with her. "I know what we can do!" he said, so excited he was hopping from foot to foot. "If they can't come to us, we can go back to Paris!"

  She knelt down so they were face to face. "But we can't, cheri. We must stay here and take care of Madame Balue, who is very ill and needs our help."

  "I don't like Madame Balue. She stinks. And she cries a lot—worse than a baby."

  "She only cries when she's in pain."

  "I never cry."

  She hugged him until he began to squirm and make a face. "That's because you're my little man," she said.

  Dominique's chest puffed with pride and he forgot for a time about going back to Paris.

  Eventually Dominique decided that Monsieur Max must have gone to heaven like his other papa, because every night, when she thought he was asleep, he could hear Maman crying Monsieur Max's name and begging him not to do something. And then one Sunday Maman took him to Mass and he heard the priest say they should all pray to heaven, to ask and you shall receive, and so Dominique began to pray to Monsieur Max, asking him to leave heaven and come to Beaune, which was nice but not as nice as Paris. It was true that Maman took him fishing here, although it was only a tiny little creek, not big like the river Seine. The cook made him gingerbread sometimes, but it was not as good as what Agnes used to buy. He liked Monsieur Balue, who laughed a lot, but he never put him up on his shoulders the way Monsieur Max used to do.

  And Maman was sad all the time. She had never been sad before, especially when Monsieur Max was around.

  Gabrielle was able to spend a lot of time with her son, for her duties to Madame Balue were not exacting ones. The nature of the woman's illness was never precisely explained, except that she had to be bled three or four times a week.

  The poor woman's arms and legs were covered with thick ridges of scars made by the barber's knife and she was left so weak she couldn't rise up from her bed. In between bleedings she would recline on the settee while Gabrielle read aloud to her, always books with a strong religious theme. She liked to talk about her childhood in Provence and how she had wanted to become a nun, but her father, who knew, of course, what was best, had said she must marry instead.

  Instead of eating in the servants' hall, as part of her duties Gabrielle ate upstairs with monsieur and madame. And when madame took one of her bad turns, Gabrielle dined alone with monsieur—chaperoned by a butler and two servants and separated by fifteen feet of polished mahogany and a ton of silver plate. Balue's cheerful voice, punctuated by his hearty laugh, would rattle on about wine and politics and the weather, while Gabrielle ate and smiled politely and even listened a little because it meant she didn't have to think. Or remember.

  Except at meals, she rarely saw Balue. Occasionally he would listen for a time while she read to his wife. Once or twice she had been in a room alone and looked up to find him watching her, his strange eye floating eerily in its socket. He would stay and chat politely for a few minutes, and then leave. He was gone from the house for many hours at a time, for his business kept him busy.

  And so the hours passed and became days and the days slipped into months, until a year had come and gone. And there was not a minute of the hours, days, and months that Gabrielle did not think of Max and mourn. Not for what she had lost, but for what had never been.

  She had been in Beaune for over a year when Baptiste Balue invited her and Dominique to come with him to watch the grape harvest.

  It was a beautiful October day. The air was dry and mild, the sky a vivid turquoise-blue, dotted with small clouds as thin and lacy as dandelion puffs. They made a picnic of it, supping under the shade of a group of cottonwoods that grew beside the vineyard. They watched the pickers walk up and down the rows, baskets swinging down their backs, hanging by straps across their foreheads. As the baskets filled with grapes, they were emptied into a cart and brought to the vats to be crushed.

  Gabrielle, with Dominique's enthusiastic help, filled a couple of baskets herself, while Balue walked beside her and explained in laborious detail the process of making wine. Gabrielle let his voice drone on above her head and luxuriated in the feel of her muscles stretching and bending after so many cramped and tedious hours spent indoors.

  That evening they all joined in a celebration to mark the beginning of the harvest. With the other village girls, Gabrielle kilted her skirts above her knees and climbed into the vat to crush the grapes.

  Someone began to play a guitar and they all stamped their feet in time to the music in a strange, clumsy dance. The sticky juice oozed between her toes and slapped up to coat her calves. It felt wonderful—cool and sensual. The smell of the must rose up to fill her head, making her feel a bit drunk.

  Gabrielle threw back her head, and her golden-red hair hung down her back to catch the rays of the dying sun. She laughed out loud and the sound of her joy bounded across the fields. It was the first time Balue had heard her laugh, and he stood looking up at her, transfixed.

  That night he tried to rape her.

  She always locked her door, but he must have kept a key, for suddenly he was there with no warning except the crash of the door against the wall, crushing her down on the mattress with his big bulk, smothering her screams with one hand while he tore at her nightdress to paw at her breasts with the other, whispering harshly about her beauty and how she was driving him mad and how he could see she wanted this, was begging for this . . . His hands left clammy trails of sweat on her skin and his breath smelled of sour wine and garlic, and though she fought him she knew she couldn't stop him. He was so heavy, so strong . . .

  She heard someone crying. Dominique, she thought as she scratched and clawed and kicked with her legs, feeling the obscenity of Balue's hard shaft jabbing at her thighs. Dominique is watching this, Dominique is going to see—

  Suddenly Balue screamed, a high-pitched woman's shriek, and arched up, his face twisted into a rictus of agony. He rolled off her, clutching his thigh, swearing and sobbing. And Dominique, her five-year-old child, stood beside the bed with a knife in his hand.

  "Maman, I gutted him!" Dominique cried, his voice shaky, almost hysterical. "I gutted him like the fishes!"

  "You damned brat! I'll kill you for this!" Balue roared. He clawed at the bedclothes, trying to pull himself up. Even in the dim light cast by the moon coming in the narrow window, Gabrielle could see the shining wetness of the blood on his thigh.

  Gabrielle leaped off the bed and, snatching up her son, began to back into the hall. Balue tried to lunge to his feet after her, but his leg collapsed beneath him and he fell to the floor, swearing and sobbing. Gabrielle heard a door open somewhere downstairs and a man call out. Balue was screaming loud enough for all of Beaune to hear.

  "And you, you bitch! I'll see you branded and whipped through the streets! I'll make you wish you—"

  Gabrielle whirled and fled from the horror in the room.

  The other servants were all too intent on discovering the source of the terrible shouts to try to stop her. She burst into the night, Dominique in her arms, and ran for the open country where there would be ditches and ravines and places to hide. She didn't know for how long she ran or where she was when she stopped. There were trees all around, and she could hear somewhere nearby the trickle of water flowing over rocks, but it was nothing compared to the roar of her own harsh breathing. She leaned her back against a large boulder and slowly sank to the ground with Dominique in her lap.

  She looked down and saw that her son still had the knife clutched tightly in his hand. It was of a set that came from the kitchen. She wondered how he had come by it, but then he had always been attracted to things that were shiny and sharp. Oh, Dominique, Dominique . . . There was blood on the sleeve of his nightshirt.

  "Dominique," she said softly, not wanting to frighten him. He wasn't crying, but she could feel tremors shaking his small body. "Give me the knife, cheri. "

  He gave it to her. "
He was a bad man, Maman."

  "Yes, he was. A very bad man."

  "I gutted him."

  "Oh, cheri ..." Silent tears streamed down Gabrielle's face. Oh my son, my son, she thought. What have I done to you?

  ❧

  It was said that November of 1788 was the coldest anyone could remember. Rivers and streams froze solid. Hailstorms ravaged the countryside, ruining the crops. It was so cold that wine bottles burst in the cellars and windmill sails had to be doused with warm water to melt the ice.

  Gabrielle and Dominique had fled Beaune with nothing but a knife and their nightclothes. Before dawn, at the first village they came to, she broke through the window of a laundry and stole enough things to make them decent and keep them warm. She stole more clothes later, and food, too, enough to live on. She begged some days, but times were hard, and she and Dominique were strangers, vagabonds, and the country folk were more used to taking care of their own. She was too afraid to stop in any one place long enough to find work. Balue's threat was not an idle one—he could have her whipped and branded for what had been done to him.

  Once a cobbler, seeing them barefoot, took pity and gave them each a pair of sabots. She thought their luck was really turning when the next day a farmer gave them a ride in his cart all the way to the next village. But then, after the cart disappeared over the crest of the hill, it began to rain and Gabrielle looked down, thinking to grab Dominique's hand so that they could run for the dubious shelter of the ditch along the road. And then she saw her son's bare feet.

  She seized his shoulders, giving him a rough shake. "What have you done with your sabots?" she shouted at him, her voice cracking.

  He stared up at her, looking small and wan and rebellious while the rain fell in icy, nugget-sized drops.

  "Don't know. I left them in the cart, I guess."

  "You guess! Oh, Dominique, what were you thinking? You can't walk across France in the middle of winter in your bare feet!" Her voice caught on a sob as the terrible useless-ness of it all struck her then. They were running away, but they had nowhere to go and there was nothing for them once they got there.

  She knelt beside her son and pulled him into her arms. She could feel through the rags of his clothes the sharp bones of his ribs. His nose was running and his lips were blue and she was killing him through her selfishness.

  Her throat felt raw, as if it had been grated with sand, and she knew she was burning with a fever. She was getting sick. What if she became too ill to care for him? What had she brought him to anyway—to starve or freeze or to the racked with fever, pummeled by icy rain in a ditch?

  She would give him up, taking him to the Nevers family. They were of his blood. They would care for him, love him probably. Dieu, but didn't they want him enough to hound her for years, trying to take him from her? After all she had done, they would probably think a cell in a convent too good for her now, but it wouldn't matter what happened to her, as long as Dominique was safe and loved.

  She held him at arm's length and forced a bright note into her voice. "Dominique? Would you like to go see your grand-mere? She is a grand duchesse and she lives in a big chateau not far from here, I think. Would you like that?"

  Dominique nodded, wiping his nose with the end of his sleeve. "I suppose so. But will M'sieur Max be able to find us there? He's coming from heaven and he might not know where to look for us."

  A sob tore from Gabrielle's pain-ravaged throat and she crushed Dominique against her breast. Oh, Max, her heart cried out to him. Max, her husband, not in heaven but safe in Paris. Was he laughing at the thought of her and Dominique running like flushed pheasants across France, with nothing, not even a pair of sabots? Did he hate them that much? Why? Why had he done this to them?

  Oh, God, Max. I loved you. I thought you loved me, you said you did, you married me. I love you, love you, love you . . .

  But though her heart called out to him, she heard only the moaning of the cold November wind, and as the rain beat down hard on her bent head, she felt for the first time in her life defeated.

  Chapter 15

  The grand ballroom in the palace of the duc d'Orleans sparkled with colored silks and satins and shimmered with gilt and brocaded velvets. Chandeliers, dripping with candles, dangled from the domed, frescoed ceiling. An orchestra played a minuet, but no one was dancing.

  Across the crowded room a woman caught the attention of a pair of sooty gray eyes and tilted her chin toward a curtained alcove. Then she turned back to her companion, who just happened to be the comte d'Artois and brother to the king. She laughed at something he said and rapped him lightly on the cheek with her fan—but not too hard for it was, after all, a royal cheek. From time to time her eyes would stray back across the room.

  The object of her attention leaned against a wall to wait, content for the moment just to watch her. In her silver gown garlanded with lame" roses and white feathers curling from her silver-blond hair, she shone like a diamond among paste jewels. Shone brighter, in fact, than the very real circlet of diamonds that graced her slender neck.

  The comte d'Artois bowed and turned from the woman, and she started to make her way across the room, angling slowly toward the alcove. She had stopped looking at him by now, but the bright spots of color on her cheeks were not entirely due to her rouge. When he saw her pull the curtains aside and disappear, he followed.

  He had expected only a bay of windows on the other side of the curtains, but instead he found a door. It opened easily beneath his hand.

  A heavy floral perfume enveloped him, and then soft arms wrapped around his neck. Lips, cool and moist, fastened onto his.

  "You swore you weren't coming," she said a moment later.

  He pushed the sleeve of her gown down her arm to trail his fingers lightly across her collarbone, and only when he heard her moan did he move lower to caress her bared breast. "I changed my mind."

  "My husband is here." The sentence ended with a gasp as he pulled on her tautened nipple.

  "So?"

  "He took me tonight, on the way here. In the carriage." She undid his breeches and stroked him with both hands, and he set his jaw to steady his breathing. "Are you jealous?" she asked, unable to hide the catch in her voice as he pressed his knee between her legs and began to rub her there, hard and fast.

  "No," he said. "Perhaps next time he takes you I can watch."

  "You are cruel."

  "You like it cruel. What you need, Madame la Marquise, is a master."

  Her laugh held both fear and excitement. "And do you, Monsieur le Vicomte, fancy yourself my master?"

  For an answer he put his hands on her shoulders and pushed her onto her knees before him. "Oh, Max," he heard her sigh as she took him in her mouth.

  He shut his eyes, giving himself over to the pleasure that would, as always, be all too brief and leave him feeling empty.

  ❧

  When the Vicomte Maximilien de Saint-Just emerged from the alcove later, the ballroom was less crowded, and the powder on the faces of those who were left was melting with the heat of the hall. The orchestra, which was now playing Mozart, was being drowned out by a cacophony of loud moans mixed with cheers and laughter drifting from a pair of double doors that opened onto a smaller room. The faro bank had been reopened.

  "Back the pharoah and the king of hearts!" he heard someone shout. He had started toward the card game when he felt a hand on his arm and looked down into the boyish face of Percival Bonville. For once it wasn't smiling.

  "I didn't expect to see you here tonight," Percy said.

  Max sighed. "Why do people insist on believing everything I say?" He felt a dull pain begin to throb behind his eyes. It meant he was getting sober again, and he plucked a glass of champagne off the tray of a passing servant to avert such a catastrophe. "Excuse me, Percy, but I believe I hear a king of hearts calling my name."

  The young American continued to hold his arm, and though Max gave him a baleful look he didn't release his grip. "Why aren'
t you on your way to the Chateau de Morvan?" Percy said. "I thought your father had taken ill and was asking for you."

  "What have you been doing, mon ami? Steaming open my correspondence?''

  Percy didn't smile. "That's more your line of work. If your father's dying—"

  "To hell with the son of a bitch," Max said with a crudity that matched his mood. His eyes went to the double doors from which came another burst of groans and laughter. "I'd rather play at faro than the prodigal son."

  "Really? I should think you'd want to make sure of your inheritance. How much have you lost already tonight?"

  "It so happens I've won thirty thousand livres. You know I never lose at anything." Max gave a sharp, bitter laugh. "Except, of course, for that one memorable and soon to be forgotten occasion." His eyes went to a woman whose silver gown matched her hair. She was speaking to a plump matron in puce silk, but she watched Max from behind her fan. He smiled at her and lifted his empty champagne glass in a mocking toast. "I'm working hard at forgetting it."

  "Forgetting her, you mean," Percy said, and he wasn't looking at the woman in silver.

  Still smiling, Max returned his attention to the American, although he failed to hide the pain that flared for a brief moment in his eyes. "Yes, her. Gabrielle. My wife."

  But you don't forget a woman like Gabrielle, my poor friend. You go on loving her until it kills you, Percy thought, wishing he dared to say it aloud.

  Percy turned to look at Max's new mistress, and his chocolate-brown eyes darkened with scorn. "Thirty thousand should just about pay for the likes of that high-class grande coquette."

  Max laughed again. "She's married to the marquis de Tesse. He pays for her."

  "And he'll kill you when he finds out you're bedding his wife."

  "If he can. If he knows. And if he cares."

  "He knows and he cares and he's in the billiard room," Percy said, then cursed himself when he realized too late his mistake.