I kissed his perfumed cheek.
He clasped my hand. “Be careful,” he warned.
Chapter Six
The front doors were ajar, as if in a fairy tale when some magical visitor is expected. I’m hardly magic, I thought, my ankle twinging as I limped up the wide stone steps. I was remembering my flight, my too obvious revulsion. Maybe the Comte had changed his mind. It was entirely possible he’d changed his mind, and from what Monsieur Sancerre had said, I knew I wouldn’t simply be let go. Not only might the Comte use the debt—or lettre de cachet—on Jean-Pierre, he might also accuse me of stealing the diamond. For robbery I would hang.
The gallows frightened me less than his touch.
I closed tall doors quietly behind me. The hundreds of candles in the great chandelier had been snuffed. Two sconces threw the vast hall into shadow.
For a moment I stood in the gloom, listening. Silence. I could have sneaked up to my rooms. As children, Jean-Pierre and I’d had opposite reactions to the punishments that followed our mischief. My brother would hide, staving off the inevitable cane. I, on the other hand, would run to confess, wanting to get my punishment over with.
I opened the study door.
The Comte sat by the fireplace, in the same chair as before dinner, a book in his hands. The normalcy of reading by the fire was more terrifying than if he’d faced me holding a torture instrument. Gooseflesh broke out on my arms.
He set the book, open-spined, on the table.
“I expected you in worse condition,” he said.
“But you expected me?” How could I sound so cool?
“You might,” he replied in that faintly mocking tone, “have let Jean-Pierre rot in the Bastille and your good aunt starve.”
“Would you really have hurt them because of me?”
“You believe I’m capable of it, and that’s what’s important. You’re no coward, my dear, yet you always fear for those you love.”
He took a paper from the table next to him, holding it toward me.
He must have noticed my limp and the damp sponge marks on my skirt, but he said nothing. Without opening the paper, I tore it in half, watching the two pieces flame and curl into black cinders. Ashes rose like sooty stars in the marble fireplace.
“I’m curious about your mental processes,” he said. “Why didn’t you see whether it was your brother’s IOU?”
“It was,” I said.
He was smiling, an unpleasant smile. “What makes you so sure?”
“You know people from experience, Comte, but I have—I believe it’s known as feminine intuition.”
“So then you do trust me a little?”
“I trust you for as long as you want to have me.”
“Yes, of course. Being a mistress is far less certain than being a wife. And now for some advice. Listen to me, my dear, for it’s important advice. You need to learn a few seductive wiles. For example, if I were you, I would refrain from telling a protector that he’s old and ugly. And you would do well to remain in the house when a lover begins to caress you. As for the shuddering, you must learn to control it.”
He spoke with cynicism, yet there was pain in the irony. Could he care for me? Beyond his desire to possess my body? I decided the answer was no. First, he was too old to care. Second, had he cared, he wouldn’t force me to become his doxy.
“On the other hand, your shuddering easily could be the reflex of an unpleasant experience. That stormy night, a band of filthy, desperate serfs, followed by that excellently kept secret, your rape.”
“Comte, are you enjoying this?”
“I just explained, my dear. Your mental processes are of interest to me.” Overcourtesy made him inscrutable.
André, I thought, oh, André. I stared down at my hands. The fingers clasped so tightly that the knuckles shone. Whatever happened to me, I was glad there’d been André, the almost unbearable ecstasy, the unison of hearts and minds. I’d had love, briefly, yet it was love, and love was all that I’d ever wanted.
“Did that scum hurt you so much?”
I shook my head. “He wasn’t a serf. I don’t know who he was. Maybe a student.”
“A young gallant, then, embarking on a promising career of robbery.” The Comte sat forward in his chair. “Did he hurt you badly?”
“No.”
“Frighten you?”
“I was afraid of what might happen to Jean-Pierre and Aunt Thérèse, but not … of … the man.…”
“So finally we come to the basic truth,” the Comte said softly, coming to where I stood near the fire. “Let me see if I have this correctly. I’m fool enough to betroth myself to a dowryless girl who wears cut-down old clothing. She writes a stiff letter of acceptance and then, before we’re married, betrays me quite happily with some gallows bait?”
“I thought I had to, to save the others. I couldn’t let them be killed, and he promised if I gave myself, they’d be safe. But then … well, I discovered I … liked him.”
“Honesty, my dear, is an overpraised virtue.”
“But you insisted on knowing!” I cried. “Comte, I’ve hurt your pride, and I’m sorry. But you’ve gotten me as your whore, and that’s far worse. Do you have to hurt me like this?”
“I do.”
“Why? Why? You’ve given me Jean-Pierre’s note. I’ve agreed to be your mistress.”
“Ah, yes, even down to setting the price. My dear, I didn’t have to make you a whore. You are an excellent one already.”
As he said this, his face contorted; that intelligent and darkly cynical face shattered into an expression that was part rage, part something I couldn’t understand, at least not then. Under the powdered wig his brows drew together, his mouth contorted as if he were in a killing agony. I barely recognized him.
And then his arms were around me, his body pressing mine back, back. His lips clamped my lips, and his teeth cut into me as he forced his tongue into my mouth. I struggled against him, hitting his back, trying to kick his legs. My mouth, under his, made incoherent noises of despair, broken pride, anguish, revulsion. I bent and twisted against him, but his arms were like iron, and he was forcing me still further back until I knew my spine must snap. I couldn’t breathe. My heart was ready to burst, and I could feel his heart hammering against me.
He released me so suddenly that I almost fell.
“Have you ever been punished?” he asked hoarsely.
“I … am now.”
“No. Not yet. You’re about to be,” he said. His face, no longer contorted, had a frightening pallor.
He gripped the top of my bodice with both hands. His wrists, under delicate, dripping lace, were strong and dark-haired. He jerked savagely. A crying sound as green silk tore. My shuddering gasps pressed out of my breasts, and the pointed pink nipples were clearly visible through the thin white lawn of my chemise. Slowly, deliberately, he ripped the chemise.
He stared down at me. “My God, you’re exquisite,” he said.
And raised his hand, slapping me with all his force.
Lights burst inside my head, pain shot through my skull, and I fell onto the tapestry rug. The shelved collection of miniatures spun, slowly righting themselves. Minuscule jade eyes, ivory eyes, gold eyes, a thousand pairs of tiny eyes gazed down on me without compassion. I tried to pull my gaping bodice closed.
“No need for modesty,” said the Comte in a deep, clenched voice, as if it were he, not I, who’d been hit. He, not I, who were in pain. “I let the servants off.”
“Are you going to kill me?”
“So much for feminine intuition. No. As I said, punish you. Hurt you as you’ve hurt me. I propose, my dear, that we start our relationship on an equal level.” He leaned over and took my hand, pulling me to my feet, roughly jerking.
I bit my lip.
“There’s nobody here. Cry out if you want.”
“Never,” I whispered.
“You will, my dear, you will.”
I didn’t make a sound,
not even when he used his riding crop. Sweat broke out on my forehead, I bit my lip until it bled, yet I didn’t cry out. At the end, though, he sodomized me with such brutality that he wrenched a sound from me. A low, sobbing gasp, like a death rattle.
Buttery sunshine, dappled by pruned oak branches, moved on dark velvet over my head. For a moment I wondered where I was. Then I moved. And raw pain reminded me that I lay in the Comte de Créqui’s bed.
The bed hangings had been opened, and the Comte leaned against a bedpost, watching me.
For the first time I saw him wigless. He was quite bald. Strong black curls surrounded his skull. His black velvet robe de chambre, opened to the waist, showed a powerful chest covered with crisp hair that, near his neck, changed from black to gray.
In dishabille he was far uglier, and far more human.
His dark eyes impaled me. I couldn’t lie there, a helpless butterfly pinned by his gaze. Without thinking, I started to sit up. My raw buttocks and thighs throbbed unbearably. I tried to stifle a groan, failed.
“May I help you?” he asked. His voice was different. None of last night’s savagery, none of his usual ironic hauteur. He sounded sympathetic. He sounded kind.
“Look away for a minute,” I said.
Last night, endless and brutal, should have made me more frightened of him. Instead, the respect I’d given him as my guardian, for being old, for advising the King, had vanished. Fear had fled, too. The Comte had shown me his worst self and—or so I naïvely thought—there was nothing in him left to respect or fear. Grimacing, wincing, I managed to find a less painful position on his soft mattress.
“Better?” he asked.
“A little.”
He turned back to me. “Not much, though?”
“A little,” I repeated. My voice had a leaden quality.
Sunlight moved on velvet. Outside, a lark sang.
The Comte said quietly, “Whenever I’m hurt, a demon possesses me. Revenge is the only way to exorcise my demon.” He paused. “As a child I was page to the old King. A group of us young nobles were pages. We shared the same tutors, the same riding and fencing masters, the same Greek, Latin, and philosophy teachers. I, alas, was smaller than the other boys. Far more clever at lessons. This made the others merciless. I was tripped, beaten, made the butt of their every joke. Once, they almost drowned me in a black-smelling horse trough. As a future peer of the realm I couldn’t let myself run sniveling to my father. Instead I used my fists continually. I defended myself against any who hurt or teased me. Before long, the pages respected me. Eventually I became their leader. As a young man, I campaigned against the Prussians—I was the kind of field general who went with his men into battle. Your father, my dear, as one of my staff officers, admired me enough to request that in case of his death I become guardian to his children. You see, I was considered a man of exceptional valor.”
He was looking at me, so I nodded.
“To be honest, though,” he went on, “my courage was the desperation of that small boy hitting out to defend himself. When I became adviser to the King, it was necessary to leave physical exploits behind me. There were still slights, though, demons to be exorcised. I learned to repay with logic. And this is interesting. Using reason, one can inflict far more hurt. I’ve never been able to forget a wrong. You betrayed me in the worst way a woman can betray a man. Still, humbling you to be my mistress should’ve been punishment enough, even for me. You touched a nerve I never knew existed. And not since I was very young has my anger exploded that way. I lost control. Completely.”
We exchanged glances, surely the most honest look two people could share, and thus we acknowledged the brutalities he’d performed on me.
“I don’t usually explain myself,” he said.
“Then why?”
“To get you to accept my apology.”
Slowly, I shook my head.
“Why not?”
“I don’t know.” I frowned, quite honestly puzzled.
My body ached and throbbed, true. Under other circumstances, though, I would have been deeply touched by that short brave boy who’d almost been drowned in black-smelling water, yet who’d coped on his own. Touched, too, that the Comte had chosen to reveal himself to me. As one of the high nobility, he owed apologies to the King alone. The words must have been almost impossible for him. Besides, I have a flighty trait—I can’t harbor a grudge. So why couldn’t I simply forgive him and accept his hard-given apology?
The Comte sat next to me on the bed. “Would flattery help?” he inquired with a hint of his usual irony. “You’re more radiant than any of the Court beauties—and I confess to having seen a great many at this close a range. Your skin is the finest silk, incredibly white and soft everywhere, and your hair is the color of a swan. Would you prefer literary allusion? You’re Venus incarnate. Well, maybe a trifle small to be a goddess incarnate, but then, as you noted, I prefer miniatures.” His lips brushed my shoulder.
His touch no longer repelled me. His lips roused no nerve endings. I felt nothing. Nothing. And then I understood why his apology had touched no responsive chord in me.
I was like one of his miniatures. Cold, hard. Last night had numbed me.
Until last night I’d been touched only with love. A happy, careless girl. Last night had taught me, more harshly than the Comte had intended. Last night the Comte had proved to me exactly what I was. The impoverished daughter of an old family. Dowryless. A girl who no longer possessed the one commodity needed for the only career of decency open to her: marriage. Lying numbed in the Comte’s huge brocade-curtained bed, I could scarcely remember my old vulnerability to shame. My aversion to selling myself was gone. I would have to rely on my body—and my wits—to enable myself and those dependent on me to survive. In my position I had to jettison virtue, honor, love, and hope of love.
My body was the object I had to sell. I must learn to sell it for the best price.
The Comte again kissed my shoulder.
I shrugged away. “Not now,” I said. Lesson one, I thought numbly. Set the terms.
“A week?” he asked. “Is that fair enough? A recovery period. After that—”
“Don’t worry. You’ll get your value. I might be secondhand goods, but I am quality. D’Epinay must be the most illustrious name of any whore in France.”
“The illustrious whores, my dear, never hint at what they are.”
“Thank you for the advice, Comte. Until last night—whatever you think—I was innocent. But you keep giving me lessons in my trade.” I glanced up at him. “I’m not as I was.”
“You’re just as strong-willed.” He smiled. I couldn’t tell if he was amused, or pretending to be. “And very young. Before long, you’ll be as impulsively generous as ever.”
I wondered, not really caring, if I could find a protector more to my liking. “What would you do if I were to leave?”
Instead of answering, the Comte went to pull the narrow tapestry bell ringer. His lack of reply was more menacing than any words he might have chosen.
Two footmen served us. One frothed chocolate with a small wooden beater, the other poured from a silver chocolatier into fragile Sèvres cups. The demeanor of both footmen was stolid. It was as if the pair was accustomed to serving me in the Comte’s bed, my shoulders and slender arms naked, my cheek bruised, and a bloodshot purple welt marking my right breast just above the drawn-up silk coverlet.
Chapter Seven
“Insufferable!” Jean-Pierre cried, his hand on his sword. “I’ll call him out!”
“Go ahead, fight a duel. And after that I can sell myself at a lower price.”
“Manon, you’re not funny.”
“The drunk I told you about, the one I pushed down, do you know what he offered?”
“No, and I don’t want to hear.”
“A sou. Maybe I could’ve bargained for more, but—”
“Stop talking like a street woman! We’re of honorable blood.”
“I’m afraid
the blood’s thinned down.” I sighed. “Jean-Pierre, listen to me. It’s, not so terrible. We’ll live together in our own house, you, me, and Aunt Thérèse. The Comte wants a salon. Think! We’ll give those parties we dreamed about. With fine wines. And pheasant pastries. Jean-Pierre, last night the chef made the most delicious frozen dessert. It’s from the Americas and called ice cream.” I forced myself to sound as impetuously vivacious as I did yesterday. “You’ll have a pianoforte and sing. We’ll have a card room and play piquet. Oh, we’ll be happy as we were before!”
The same afternoon, Jean-Pierre had just arrived home. The two of us were in my silk-lined boudoir. He sat on the end of my pale blue chaise longue, his shoulders slumped with dejection. I took my tea standing, pretending I wished to gaze out at vivid autumn trees. My bruised cheek was painted. Naturally I hadn’t burdened my brother with the beating. Or with the part his IOU had played in making me accept the Comte. Poor Jean-Pierre. He couldn’t take any more. As it was, I feared he would carry out his threat to challenge our guardian. In a duel the Comte must win. He was old, an ex-soldier, physically brave, and Jean-Pierre an inexperienced seventeen-year-old.
Attempting to distract my brother, I extended the hand with the large diamond. “Behold,” I said.
“He pays promptly,” said Jean-Pierre, with bitterness rare to him.
“It was a gift. Before …” I tried not to think of what had happened. “Jean-Pierre, whatever am I going to tell Aunt Thérèse?”
He lifted his blond head in that angle I loved. “Why not the truth? As you told me.”
“That’s different! I had to tell you. You’re my brother. We’re so close.” This, at least, had not been deadened, my great and protective love for my brother. I sipped from my tea dish. “Poor Auntie. She’s so proper and old-fashioned. Knowing would kill her.”
“You tell me, Manon. How can you manage to have him support us, sleep with him, and keep it secret?”
I sighed again. After a long pause I set down the tea saucer. “She always wants to believe the best. We just have to keep her in the dark. What if I say I told the Comte about … that … what happened in the coach, and though he can’t marry me, he still wants to be our guardian and look after us?”
French Passion Page 5
