René watched that gesture of futile protection and was touched to the quick. For the thousandth time, he wished that things could have been different. That was equally futile he knew, but it could not be helped.
With abrupt decision, he moved toward her. He put his fingers under her chin, tilting her head, then bent to press his lips to hers. Her mouth under his was smooth and cool, fragile and incredibly sweet. It was all he could do not to increase the pressure, to draw her up into his arms and take her to his bed. Not yet. Not yet.
With the all-too-familiar ache in his chest driving into his loins, he released her, straightened, and walked away.
Cyrene watched him go, watched the swing of his broad shoulders, which tapered into the line of his hips, the muscular grace of his long legs. Passive denial was better than none, she told herself; she had not returned his kiss. The effort it had taken to gain that small victory frightened her. She must marshal her strength, prepare herself for the clashes between them, or she would wind up warming his bed, indeed.
The thought that came to her then brought a tight smile to her face. She had not warmed his bed the night before. Rather, he had, in a manner of speaking, warmed hers.
The seamstress came. She was a brash woman known as Madame Adèle, with red hair coarse with henna, a large, raw-boned frame, a strong scent of patchouli, and a faint air of disreputability. Regardless, her voice was surprisingly soft and her movements competent. Though she was escorted by René, once she was introduced to Cyrene and took out her length of ribbon to begin measuring, she paid him little attention. Her attitude toward Cyrene, unspoken but evident, was one of fellow feeling. It was not hard to imagine that once, before she had become a seamstress, she might have been a mistress.
Cyrene allowed herself to be divested of René’s dressing gown. In his silk nightshirt, standing before the warmth of the sitting-room fire, she turned this way and that, lifting her arms on instruction, bending her neck or holding her head straight as required. While René had been out, she had come to the painful decision that defiance on the matter of clothing was without purpose. She was at enough of a disadvantage living in his house, subject to his will, without being half-naked at the same time. It worried her, the compromises she was making. It was as if she were being forced to retreat step by step. What would become of it, she did not care to guess, but for the moment she could see no alternative.
In spite of herself, she began to be interested in the subject at hand as Madame Adèle asked her preference in colors and styles and materials and discussed the latest variations in the formal dress of the court, the robe à la française.
“I’m afraid I know little of fashion,” Cyrene said finally, her voice stiff.
“What is to know except what becomes you?” Madame Adèle said with a shrug of broad shoulders. “Madame Pompadour now has such a fondness for pink and peach, blue and gray; everything must be in these pale, so delicate shades. They are not for you, I think, chère; on you they would fade to nothing. Deeper colors, yes, bright and clear. These are what you need with your hair like the pale syrup of the sugarcane. And the fabrics from Lyon, the re-embroidered brocades, yes! I see you in a deep blue-green embroidered in gold. What say you? Or perhaps a rich cream. Not with Pompadour’s silver, but also with the gold?”
Cyrene frowned. “Aren’t such fabrics very dear?”
“What of it? M’sieur Lemonnier has said you are to have the best that can be procured.” The woman sent René a roguish glance that was also slightly feline and named a price that made Cyrene gasp.
“To spend so much on something to cover the body — it isn’t right.”
“Everyone does it, chère. Besides, it isn’t just to cover the body but to lift the spirit, to make one think that we are not so removed from the grand affairs of France here in this provincial outpost.”
“I like Louisiane.”
“So do I, but you must admit it isn’t la belle France!”
René sat in an armchair to one side of the fireplace with his legs stretched out before him, his feet crossed at the ankle, and his hands folded across his waist. He watched Cyrene turn back and forth, quietly enjoying the view of her slender form under the silk of his nightshirt outlined in a glowing red-orange nimbus by the fire behind her. Her cooperation was unexpected. It was also troubling. For some reason he did not care to analyze, it made him feel guilty, like a debauched roué. It did not help to realize that she probably saw him in that selfsame light. He had given her every reason to hold that opinion; still, it galled him to have his intentions so misread. And it chafed him even more to recognize that he would like nothing more than to play the roué, indeed.
Cyrene sent René a glance from under her lashes, wondering that he should be ready to dig so deep into his pocket to dress her, wondering just how far he would plunge to satisfy his whim to see her in finery. The burning expression she saw in his eyes stopped her breath for an instant. She had seen that look before. He wanted her.
She had known that her attraction for him was based on lust; even if she had not sensed it, he had told her so in plain words. And yet she had not until this moment discerned the depths of his desire. It had been masked by his self-control, she thought, carefully kept from her. The reason was not hard to find. It could be used as a weapon. A weapon against him.
“Cream brocade embroidered in gold, I like the sound of that,” she mused aloud in answer to the seamstress, at the same time glancing down at herself, following the direction of René’s gaze, which seemed to be directed at her lower body. She stiffened as she saw the exposure of her shape with the fire behind her. With an effort of will, she refrained from instantly moving away from in front of the fireplace. Anger touched her and she searched her mind for the most expensive material she could name. “But I also like the darker peach colors. I am thinking of satin with drapings of alençon lace, a veil of it with only a hint of the peach showing through. What of that?”
“Magnificent, chère,” Madame Adèle said, dropping to her knees and spreading her arms wide to measure from Cyrene’s waist to the floor.
“And can it be had also embroidered in gold?” Cyrene lifted her arms in the gesture of an embrace that allowed René an unimpeded view, turning slightly so that her body was in profile, and taking a deep breath so that her breasts lifted like proud globes.
“Of a certainty. It will be a toilette fit for a queen.”
“Very well,” she said with a seraphic smile directly into René’s eyes. “That is what I want.”
The revenge of the kept woman, to be kept as grandly as the keeper’s resources would allow. René watched Cyrene take it with a tight feeling in his chest that had nothing to do with the ache in his loins. He had brought her to this, she who had been warm and open and straightforward, and without the need for such petty retaliation. He had not meant it to happen that way, but that was no excuse. He would have to repair the damage, somehow, some way. It might very well be a pleasurable occupation.
There was more discussion of fabrics, ribbons, and lace; of types of sleeves, skirt widths and lengths, and bodice trims; of coifs and cloaks; of hair powder and pins; and of a hundred other things. René endured it all. Cyrene kept the seamstress talking as long as possible. She ordered gowns and petticoats and shawls and cloaks and delicate lace coifs with abandon, taking intense pleasure in the idea of spending René’s money, expecting at any moment to be told she had gone too far.
He said nothing, but neither did he take his gray gaze from her. In it there was a promise, if not of retribution then at least of a reckoning. She both dreaded and anticipated the moment when Madame Adèle would leave. She wanted to see what he would do, but at the same time there was something in the hooded depths of his eyes that made her wary.
Finally, the seamstress gathered up the tools of her trade and departed with promises ringing in the air of prodigies of labor and speed in producing something for Cyrene to wear. The door closed after her. Quiet gathered in the roo
m so that the soft bursting of a coal in the fireplace was loud.
Cyrene looked around for the velvet dressing gown in an instinctive bid for protection. Before she could find it, René got to his feet and moved toward her. He reached to close his hands upon her shoulders, turning her to face him. Beneath the silk of the nightshirt, her skin was smooth and soft, but the bones of her shoulders felt fragile, easily breakable. Her lips were moist and parted, her breath sweet. She stared up at him in defiance, though her eyes were shadowed, concealing.
Cyrene felt the throb of the pulse in her throat. Inside her, the fear subsided, to be replaced by a curious waiting stillness. His hold was warm and firm, the grip of his hands and the slight caressing movements of his thumbs on her shoulders disturbing. His face was absorbed, the hard planes burnished to a copper glow by the firelight. Cyrene knew an odd mingling of triumph and fear, denial and desire. If she closed her eyes, swayed toward him …
Her power over him would be greater, her revenge more devastating if he was committed to physical intimacy with her. She knew that with some ancient instinct that had nothing to do with what had passed between them. The temptation to ensure that commitment mounted to her head like the fumes of fine brandy, potent, enticing.
No. It was too dangerous, too dishonorable.
But there was no gain without a gamble. And if he had no use for honor, why should she?
What, then, of her determination to resist him, her fine defiance? What guarantee was there that she would not succumb to his practiced seduction, that she would not abandon her quest for vengeance just as she was in danger of discarding her resistance?
What, indeed?
He bent his head to press his lips to hers with infinite care, with boundless and disarming tenderness. Her mouth was cool, tremulous at the corners, slowly warming, slowly firming. He brushed its smoothness with his own, engrossed in the silken sensation, in the honeyed taste of her, mindlessly rejoicing in her lack of withdrawal. He crossed his arms behind her back, bringing her closer, molding the curves of her body to the hard flatness of his chest and thighs, absorbing her soft resilience that was the perfect complement to his angular form as if he could possess her through the pores of his skin. The warm, womanly fragrance of her filled his senses. He felt the lift of her arms about him, the trembling of her fingers as she clasped her hands behind his neck.
Cyrene’s mind was on fire. The blood raced in her veins, tumbling, hectic, molten with need and distress. The touch of his tongue upon hers was tantalizing yet jolting, frightening in its presage of a more intimate invasion. She could feel her defenses slipping away, receding with the hot rise of her own desire. There was enthrallment in the delicate probing of his kiss, which sought out the most sensitive and responsive areas of her mouth. He shifted with a whispering rustle of clothing, and she felt the touch of his hand at her breast, encircling, gently rubbing the exquisitely responsive peak. With a soft sound deep in her throat, she pressed against him.
There was despair in her sigh. René heard it and felt his heart constrict. The fervency of his need began to ebb. In a moment of vivid clarity, he saw what he was doing, and why, and a spasm of self-disgust gripped him. The muscles of his body went taut, then relaxed. By slow degrees, he compelled himself to release Cyrene’s lips, to remove his hand from her breast, to draw back from her.
Cyrene stared up at him in confusion. She could no more comprehend what he was doing than she could her own dismayed reaction to it. Her only recourse was pride and pretense.
She swung away from him, her eyes bright and her voice husky with unshed tears. “I will thank you not to do that again!”
“I would give you my word if I thought I could keep it. At the moment, it seems unlikely.”
“The next time you will regret it.”
“And then again, I may not. It’s a chance I’ll have to take, won’t I?”
She turned slowly to face him once more with her hands knotted into fists in front of her. “I can give you my word.”
He was ninety-nine kinds of fool. What he could have of her, he did not want; what he wanted, he could not have. Or could he?
“Don’t,” he said. “Don’t give me your word. But make ready to annihilate me if you must, and if you can. There will be a next time.”
13
SELF-KNOWLEDGE COULD BE a bitter thing. Cyrene sat thinking long after René had finished dressing and left the house. She could not get over the fact that it was not she who had called a halt to their embrace. The thought was mortifying, but more dismaying still was the convoluted thinking that had allowed her to consider surrender. Had it been generated by a passion for revenge or by the powerful attraction René exerted as a man? That was the question that haunted her.
She had a much better appreciation now for the force of that attraction. There were men like that, men who stood out in a crowd, who seemed to draw people to them without conscious effort, without realizing their unique appeal.
But, of course, René knew his attraction well. As much as she hated admitting it, she had given him all too much reason to know his effect upon her. Her only consolation was that she seemed to have some degree of attraction for him also, else she would not be where she was. Not that she felt any inclination to preen herself over the fact. Many women had apparently appealed to him in the past for brief periods. He was a man of strong desires, one used to getting what he wanted. Which made it all the more unbelievable that he had not taken her when he had had the chance.
Was it possible that he was toying with her? Could he be taking some perverted pleasure in seeing how wide a breach he could make in her defenses? Or was it that he required not just a physical surrender but one of the spirit as well?
That, at least, he would not get. Whatever else she might do, she would not surrender her innermost self.
Whatever else.
Desire, she had discovered, could be a weapon. It was one she could use, one she would use. There was danger involved, yes, but it was a risk she could take.
She had thought once, for a mercifully brief time, that she loved René. Whatever she had felt had died with his betrayal and was unlikely to be resurrected. As for giving herself to him in physical union, she had done that once already of her own will. There was no great sacrifice in doing so again, not if it had a purpose. She had been foolish to place so much importance on the act or to be so afraid. Foolish, indeed.
The first of the gowns from Madame Adèle was ready to be fitted the following morning and was delivered by late afternoon, a little more than twenty-four hours after the order was placed. It was not some practical day costume as might be expected; with true French appreciation for what was important, it was one of the three formal court dresses, the ubiquitous robe à la française that had been commissioned. It arrived, not by coincidence, just in time for a musical soirée being given that evening by Madame Vaudreuil; Madame Adèle and her helpers had worked far into the midnight hours to be sure that it was ready. The seamstress stayed to help Cyrene into the gown in case there was a need for further minor fitting. She fussed around Cyrene, adjusting the bodice and twitching at the draped sides of the skirt front, then stood back.
“Magnifique!” she exclaimed, clasping her hands. “No one will be able to believe you haven’t just this moment stepped off the ship from France. First the silk stockings and the slippers from the cobbler, then, if you will permit that I contrive with your hair, they will think you have come straight from Versailles itself!”
Cyrene submitted to having her hair dressed and powdered, though she was doubtful of the back combing that seemed necessary. When at last she was permitted to view the result in the mirror, she could only sit and stare. The person she knew was gone and in her place was a stranger. The hairstyle and revealing neckline of the formal gown made her look older, more sophisticated, and, at the same time, more frivolous. The gown itself was of azure-blue brocade with a square bodice inset with a pleated lace border known as a tatez-y, which meant
, most slyly, touch here. The close-fitting sleeves reached to the elbow and were adorned with more pleated lace and bunches of ribbon, while the top skirt, held out at the sides over panniers, was open in front over an underskirt composed of tiers of ribbon-trimmed lace.
“ You see? The essence of fashion!” the seamstress rattled on. “All that is needed is a touch of rouge applied with the hare’s foot, perhaps a patch or two, and voilà! Hearts will be broken, perhaps even that of M’sieur René Lemonnier, yes?”
“Perhaps,” Cyrene said with a faint, ironic smile.
“You permit, then?” The woman took out a hare’s foot and a pot of rouge.
“I permit.”
They were finishing with the rouge pot when René’s footsteps were heard on the outside stairs. The seamstress paused in her ministrations and urged Cyrene to her feet. Standing back a few paces, she waited, her face alive with expectation. René opened the door and stepped inside. There was a faint murmur of voices as the serving woman met him and took his hat. A moment later he appeared in the bedchamber doorway.
René stopped short just inside the room. The woman who faced him was exquisite, with elegance of form combined with an ethereal air, but there was little to connect her with Cyrene. He had thought that having her gowned and powdered like the other women of his circle would make her seem more commonplace, less unusual. Instead, it lent her the remote quality not unlike that cultivated by the noble class. Her normal bearing with its straight, proud stance, when coupled with the correct formal clothing, marked her as a natural aristocrat. It was disconcerting and also disturbing.
He moved slowly into the room. His voice soft, he said, “Well, well.”
“We are just down to the patches, m’sieur,” Madame Adèle declared. “What say you? Shall it be a small heart at the corner of the mouth to draw the eye to its shape or perhaps a rose beneath the eye to direct attention there?”
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