Tucker's Inn

by Tucker's Inn (retail) (epub)

  Louis did not notice the proprietorial sidelong looks of the man beside her, he did not notice the way his slender white fingers lay almost caressingly on her bare arm. Why should he? His gaze was for Lisette, and Lisette alone.

  And he had no notion of what would take place when the musicians had finally packed away their strings and the last carriage had rolled away. Indeed, it would be many years before he learned the truth of the life Lisette led behind the elegant facade of the Chateau du Bois.

  * * *

  She had left her Uncle Armand drinking a last glass of champagne in the flower-decked bower off the great ballroom and climbed the staircase to the balcony that overlooked it. Her feet were sore from all the dancing and her ankles ached, for the heels on her new brocade shoes were higher than she had ever worn before. But she did not feel in the least tired, only exhilarated.

  As she had confided to Louis, this had been the first grown-up ball she had attended – in the past she had been allowed only to peep at the grand proceedings, sitting out of sight on the floor of this very balcony and watching round-eyed through the balustrades – and she had enjoyed every moment of it. Wearing her new gown, basking in the appreciative glances, sipping champagne, dancing until she thought her feet would drop off, flirting outrageously from behind her feathered mask… and the young Englishman, Louis Fletcher.

  Most of all, Louis Fletcher.

  He was so handsome, so virile, so unlike any other man she knew. The English, of course, were noted for being roughnecks, a little uncouth even, compared to her refined, mannered, compatriots. She had heard they liked nothing better than to fight, be it a duel or a brawl, and certainly Louis had that hard edge of raw masculinity. It excited her and called to the wild fire in her blood that no amount of tutoring in the art of being a lady had been able to tame.

  And he liked her too, she was certain of it. Something had sparked unspoken between them each time their eyes met, and excitement had shivered deliciously in the deepest parts of her. It shivered again now, just thinking of him, making her squirm with pleasure.

  Lost in her dream world, she did not notice Uncle Armand approaching up the great staircase, and she jumped at his touch on her arm.

  ‘Lisette…’

  She spun round to see him standing beside her, a little too close for comfort. He was smiling at her, his lips curving downwards as they always did, so that his smile was not truly a smile but a smirk, and there was the lascivious look in his hooded eyes that she had learned to hate – and fear.

  ‘So – how did you enjoy your first ball, ma chère?’ he asked. His tone was silky.

  ‘It was wonderful.’ But the familiar feeling of being trapped like a rabbit in a snare was beginning in her gut, spoiling her pleasure.

  ‘And it’s not over yet.’ His fingers began to stroke the soft skin on her forearm. Panic twisted within her once more.

  ‘I am tired, Uncle.’ She tried to move away, but his fingers tightened, restraining her.

  ‘No, you are not, ma chère. You are wide awake and brim full of joie de vivre.’

  ‘I am tired!’ There was no coquetry in her eyes now, only pleading. ‘I am going to bed.’

  ‘Without showing me how grateful you are that I have allowed you such a memorable evening? Come, petite!’ His arm went about her waist. ‘I have had to watch you all night dancing with other men, smiling at them. You know how that made me feel? That boy, for instance. You liked him, did you not?’

  ‘Yes, but…’ She knew that to admit it would inflame him further, but she could not lie.

  ‘He’s just a boy!’ The silky voice was low and scornful. ‘He can never do for you what I do! What we share is special, is it not? All the more so because it is our secret.’ He bent closer, whispering in her ear. ‘You are my special girl, and I am your special uncle. Isn’t that so?’

  His hot breath against her bare throat made her flinch inwardly, but she no longer tried to pull away. It would be useless, just as it always had been.

  ‘Yes,’ she whispered back.

  He took her hand, guiding it to the hard, swollen member which strained beneath the silk of his breeches.

  ‘He does not have this for you, chérie. Because he does not love you as I do. Come now, no more talk of being tired. You shall sleep afterwards in my bed, between my silk sheets. And I will be there beside you, protecting you. Isn’t that what has always made you happy, ever since you were a little girl?’

  Her lip trembled; she caught it between her teeth, but she did not draw her hand away. Instead, she did what he had taught her over the long years since her parents had died and she had become his ward. Even before that, it had begun, when he had come to visit. One of her earliest memories was of him drawing her on to his knee, touching her intimately beneath her little gown, and encouraging her to touch him. And when she had come to the Chateau du Bois he had begun to go much, much further.

  She had not liked it then and she did not like it now. But for all that, she associated it with security, and, because he had so often told her so, with love. And perversely, in view of the distaste she felt, she enjoyed the feeling of power that came after it was over. She had not felt that as a child, she had merely felt guilty and unhappy, but she felt it now. She could abstract herself from the disgusting touch of his milk-white hands, abstract herself from the acts he asked her to perform, look down as if she were floating on the ornately carved ceiling and see that this man who ruled her life was actually putty in her hands, made weak and helpless by his desire for her.

  And tonight… tonight would not be so bad. She could close her eyes tonight and pretend she was lying, not with her uncle, but with Louis Fletcher.

  ‘Come, my sweet Lisette.’ Lust rasped in the silky-soft voice, and the hand about her waist slipped down to the firm swell of her buttocks.

  He guided her up the stairs and along the vaulted corridor to the luxurious master suite he occupied.

  The door shut after them.

  * * *

  It was almost a year before Louis saw Lisette again, and he had, truth to tell, almost forgotten her.

  In the early days when he and his father had first returned to England, he had thought of her constantly, his blood stirring, his mind awhirl with the new sensations she had aroused in him. It was as if she had taken over his mind and his body, he dreamed of her at night, found her constantly in his thoughts by day, yearned with a fierce sharp intensity to see her again. The fascination she had excited in him would not be dimmed no matter what he did. When he hawked, he imagined her there beside him, watching in awe as his birds soared and struck. When he drank with his friends he saw her small nose wrinkling as the champagne bubbles tickled it. He heard her laugh in the wind, smelled the faint rose scent of her perfume on every summer breeze.

  But as the weeks became months she began to recede. He thought of her less often, taking out the memory of her to savour rather than being obsessed by it, and by the time winter came he scarcely thought of her at all.

  When, the following spring, his father told him that they had been invited to stay at the Chateau du Bois he was almost regretful, for that night seemed to him now a distant dream which would turn to dust if returned to reality. She would be less beautiful than he remembered, perhaps she would have a lover. Certainly he would be tongue-tied and foolish when faced with the girl who had so obsessed him.

  ‘I think I would prefer not to go,’ he said to Peter, and his father frowned.

  ‘What’s the matter with you? It’s a great honour. Why don’t you want to go?’

  Louis avoided his father’s eyes.

  ‘It’s not to my taste, the kind of life they lead. While the poor are starving, they spend a king’s ransom on amusing themselves and living off the fat of the land.’

  ‘That’s no business of ours,’ Peter said harshly. ‘It’s not for us to question their ways. And there may be great advantage in it for us.’

  ‘I fail to see what,’ Louis argued. ‘It�
��s not as if they are merchants we can strike deals with. They think themselves above that kind of thing.’

  Peter snorted impatiently. He had no intention of spelling out to Louis the advantage he had in mind, and no intention of arguing further, either.

  ‘I have already accepted the invitation,’ he said tersely. ‘We leave in a month’s time.’

  Louis tried one last tack.

  ‘Why don’t you take Gavin in my place? He’d enjoy it, I have no doubt.’

  ‘I am sure he would,’ Peter agreed, his mouth tightening. Already Gavin was showing signs of preferring to waste his time in the pursuit of pleasure instead of knuckling down to work in the way Peter would have wished. ‘But Gavin is still too young to be an ambassador and I have no intention of indulging his liking for the easy life. It is you who has been invited, Louis, and it is you who will accompany me. Now, the matter is closed.’

  And so it was that a reluctant and somewhat apprehensive Louis accompanied his father to France, and to the Chateau du Bois.

  The moment he set eyes on Lisette, however, all the tumultuous feelings he had experienced the previous year came flooding back.

  If anything, she was more beautiful than he remembered her, but of course, she was almost a year older, he reminded himself. Her little breasts had filled out to an enticing swell, her tumbling hair was now pinned up, revealing a slender neck which was somehow the more vulnerable for being exposed. Her lashes were darker than he remembered, her eyes just as green, just as tantalizing, her lips fuller and redder, though he could see no evidence of paint upon them.

  But although she still laughed and teased, there was an edge that had not been there before, as if she were hiding some secret unhappiness. The child playing at being grown-up had gone, the woman who had taken her place had about her an air of mystery that not even the feathered mask had been able to confer upon her. Louis looked at her and forgot that he had not wanted to come here. He was unaware of anyone else in the room, tolerant suddenly of the foppish men and haughty women, even the Marquis du Bois, Lisette’s uncle, though the man inspired in him a feeling of dislike. And he scarcely noticed the young girl, a new addition to the household, a slight, dark child of eleven or twelve who was introduced as another niece, come to live at the chateau. Once again, he had eyes only for Lisette.

  As for her feelings for him, he simply could not be sure. Sometimes those eyes met his and challenged so that his heart beat a tattoo and breath constricted in his throat. Sometimes she seemed to ignore him so deliberately he was plunged into the depths of despair. She flirted most outrageously, he noticed, when her uncle was present, as if the game she played was more for her own amusement than for his benefit. And he was tossed about on a sea of emotion more wild than any storm the English Channel had thrown at the schooner on the voyages he had made across it.

  On the fourth day they went riding together. Lisette, he discovered, was an expert horsewoman with a skill and daring that matched his own. As they galloped and raced, taking low hedges and ditches as though they were flying, all her artifice seemed to fall away as she laughed with exhilaration and kicked at her horse’s flanks, urging the fleet little mare to an even faster pace. Once, her hat blew off, bowling ahead of the horses on a stiff breeze. Louis caught up with it, scooped it up on his riding crop and turned to watch as she caught up with him. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes bright as emerald chips, her hair, no longer held in place by her cap, coming loose from its pins and blowing in long red-gold curls about her face.

  ‘Your cap, ma’mselle.’ He held it out to her but she made no effort to take it.

  ‘You keep it for me. If I put it back on it will only blow off again.’

  The velvet was smooth to his touch and warm from the heat of her head. He was only too glad to hold it, for the reins pressed the material against his palm so that he had an illusion of intimacy with its owner.

  ‘Let’s walk awhile,’ she said. ‘I want to talk to you. We’ve never really talked, have we? Though, truth to tell, I haven’t much breath left. You will have to be the one to do the talking.’

  Panic assailed him; he could not think of a single thing to say.

  She laughed, low in her throat.

  ‘Come on now, don’t be shy. And you cannot pretend your silence is because your French is not good enough. You speak it every bit as well as I do.’

  ‘Because my mother is French,’ he said. ‘My brother and I were both raised to use one language as fluently as the other. It satisfied both my mother’s pride in her native country and my father’s ambition for us to be able to hold our own with the French merchants and not be cheated through a lack of understanding.’

  ‘Ah!’ she said. ‘Now tell me, is England as rough as they say it is? I’ve never been there, and I want to know all about it.’

  ‘I think you should visit then,’ Louis said, bold suddenly. ‘I shall ask my father to invite you.’

  Her eyes met his, teasing, challenging.

  ‘I would much rather, Louis, that the invitation came from you.’

  The horses were walking shoulder to shoulder; she was close, so close to him, and yet so far away.

  ‘Of course it comes from me,’ he said. ‘I would like nothing better than to show you England, Lisette.’

  And so much more besides, he added silently.

  They had reached the edge of a small copse, bordered by a stream. The horses slowed to a halt, looking longingly at the cool clear water that ran there. Louis dismounted in a quick fluid movement; Lisette followed suit.

  ‘The horses are thirsty, and so am I.’

  She twisted the reins loosely around an overhanging branch, went upstream of the horses and dropped on to her knees on the lush grass. As she scooped water into her cupped hands and drank, Louis knelt beside her, doing the same. The water was icy cold and tasted sweeter than any wine. He savoured it, and as his parched throat grew cooler, the blood in his veins ran more hotly.

  He looked at her, kneeling there, the water sparkling in droplets on her flushed face, and the longing for her grew stronger than his fear of rejection.

  ‘Here… let me…’ He drew a kerchief from his pocket and reached out to dab the droplets from her cheeks. Her face was tilted towards him, her lips full and pursed, just right for the kissing. He framed her chin with his hands, holding it steady, met that tantalizing gaze with his own. Their faces were now just inches apart; desire twisted deep within him.

  ‘Lisette… I want you so.’ His voice was rough. But she did not try to turn away.

  ‘I know,’ she whispered.

  His body ached for her, the blood thundered in his ears with the gentle song of the stream as it gurgled over the pebbles and washed against the low banks.

  Slowly, as if in a dream, he drew her towards him until their mouths hovered and touched. And the spell was broken and there was nothing left but urgency and overwhelming need. Her mouth tasted sweet like the spring water, her lips were soft beneath his, then moving with the same hungry need, parting, pressing, sucking. His tongue went between them, hers moved against it in a response he had not dared to expect.

  ‘Oh Lisette, Lisette…’

  Their bodies were now as close as their faces; pleasure sparked like lightning before a storm as they fell back together into the moist grass, intent only on satisfying the crying need that overwhelmed them.

  He scrabbled up her skirts and petticoats; her thighs, long, slender, soft, parted to his touch. She writhed beneath him like a small frantic animal, rearing her hips to his. With a groan he freed himself of his breeches, burying his throbbing hardness in the soft place where his fingers had touched, and quite suddenly he felt her stiffen beneath him, pushing him away.

  ‘No! No!’

  It was too late; he could not stop now. He drove into her; with a few frantic strokes it was over. For a moment the intensity of it blinded and deafened him; he lay upon her heavy, spent, unmoving. Then the enormity of what he had done began to imping
e upon his consciousness, a thin disturbing trickle that quickly gathered into a flood.

  * * *

  He rolled away from her and sat up. She lay still on the grass, her face wet now, not with spring water, but with tears. The neck of her gown gaped, her skirts, still bunched about her hips, revealed thighs that glistened with his seed. He reached over to pull them down.

  ‘Lisette, I am so sorry! What can I say?’

  She stared up at the sky, her lower lip caught between her teeth, and still the tears escaped the corners of her eyes and trickled down her cheeks.

  The guilt was a knife thrust in his heart.

  ‘I’ve hurt you and dishonoured you. What sort of a wretch am I to treat you so?’

  She shook her head slowly. ‘Don’t blame yourself, Louis. It was not your fault.’

  ‘Of course it was!’ he grated angrily. ‘You told me no, and still I…’

  ‘No!’ She moved at last, sitting up and laying a hand on his arm. ‘No – you did what any man would do. The fault is mine, all mine. There are things about me that you do not know…’

  For some reason her willingness to accept her share of the blame angered him. She was a sixteen-year-old innocent. He was a man of nineteen and old enough to know better. Yet he had taken advantage of her as if she were some tavern wench or woman of ill repute. The responsibility for what had occurred was his and his alone.

  ‘There is no excuse for me!’ he said angrily. ‘I’ve wanted you, yes, I admit it, from the first moment I set eyes on you. But I should have been able to control my urges. This is not the way it should be, taking you like a dog takes a bitch on heat. Faith, if your uncle knew what I have done…’

  She turned her head away; he did not see the look in her eyes at the mention of her uncle.

  ‘How can you ever forgive me?’ he asked, and it was a cry of anguish.

  High in the trees a wood pigeon fluttered, the beating of its wings loud in the stillness of the afternoon; the horses shifted their feet and flicked their ears against a swarm of midges.