Knaves

by Lawless, M. J.

  His manservant, Latour had frowned slightly when Valmont told them that he would greet his visitors, though he did not question this apparent impropriety on the part of the Marquis. A giant of a man, Latour was to ugliness what his master was to beauty, his face a knotted collection of bumps and scars: keeping such a servant in an age when others insisted on prissy good looks and manners was one reminder that Valmont’s own values had been formed in a more robust era.

  Now the car finally drew up before the steps and the driver stepped out to open the door for its occupants. A slender, delightful leg extended outwards, the high heel stepping onto the gravel of the drive, to be followed by the graceful form of Jeanne Duval who wore a light, summer coat and a silky, blue dress that hovered around her sweet body. She looked, Valmont thought to himself, like Sophie Marceau, or perhaps a young Michèle Mercier, her hair tightly coiled to her head and a pair of sunglasses protecting her eyes from the bright, mid-morning sun.

  As Sebastian Rider emerged from the other side of the car, Valmont watched them with interest. The tall, broad-shouldered Englishman was wearing a sports jacket, his dark hair slightly tousled in that irritating fashion emulated after so many lesser Hollywood film stars, but he looked up in surprise as Latour approached them. No doubt Sebastian was not used to being overshadowed by anyone, and Valmont’s smile widened.

  Latour took hold of their luggage and the pair walked towards the house. Valmont was intrigued to see that Jeanne appeared to keep a slight distance from her companion and he suppressed his smile. It wouldn’t do to indicate that he had won his bet just yet. Lady Luck could still deal any amount of surprises.

  “Madame Duval,” he called out in French. “Welcome to my humble home.”

  “You keep a very beautiful house,” she replied in the same language as she came sedately up the steps, reaching out with a hand which Valmont took between his fingers, bowing slightly before he kissed it. Sebastian frowned slightly at this.

  “Monsieur Rider,” he said, shifting now to English. “I hope your journey was a pleasant one.”

  “Very,” replied Sebastian, a little stiffly. Realising the direction in which Sebastian looked, Valmont decided that he wouldn’t release Jeanne’s hand after all.

  “Please,” he said, still holding onto Jeanne while he gestured towards the door with his riding crop, “allow me to show you around Chateau de Tour while Latour takes your things up to your room.”

  “Rooms,” Jeanne added primly.

  “But of course.” Now Valmont couldn’t resist a smile this time.

  Sebastian was watching the servant walk ahead of them with slow, heavy strides towards the stairs. “He’s a… he’s an unusual fellow,” he said, attempting to make light conversation.

  Glancing back over his shoulder as he led Jeanne towards the nearest room, he affected not to have noticed what the other man was talking about. “Who? Oh, Latour? A local fellow. He’s been here for years. I remember when I’d come here as a boy—I’d insist that he carry me on his shoulders all around the gardens like a pack horse.”

  “You like to ride, Monsieur le Marquis?” Jeanne said. She had removed her sunglasses and he was aware of her eyes shifting to his breeches as she spoke.

  “Madame,” he replied, “please, let us be informal here. Donatien, please.”

  “Of course,” she said with a slight bow of her head.

  “You could barely imagine the pleasure I have when riding, Jeanne,” he said, bending closer to her and affecting to speak as though Sebastian wasn’t present. “It is the second greatest delight I know.”

  “And the first?” she asked, her green eyes fixed on his, her lips parted slightly. He was suddenly aware of her perfume, a subtle hint of jasmine. By way of reply, he lifted her hand to his mouth once more and pressed his lips against her fingers.

  “Well, that’s marvellous, I’m sure,” Sebastian butted in. To Valmont’s surprise, he felt a strong arm gently but firmly press between the two of them and the Englishman placed a proprietary hand on Jeanne’s shoulder. The young woman looked up in shock at her companion and Valmont opened his mouth to express indignation at such an indiscretion. Something in Sebastian’s eyes made him halt, however, and he turned his anger into a laugh.

  “Very well,” he said, conceding his ground just this once. “Please, let me show you my home, then you can refresh yourselves before we eat.”

  The entrance hall into the chateau was impressive, with its wide sweeping staircase and marble floors, but it was nothing compared to the anterooms that led away from it in a stately procession.

  “How long has Chateau de Tour been in your family, Donatien?” Jeanne asked. “After all, we’re a long way from Valmont.”

  Turning his head slightly to regard the young woman who (he noticed with interest) had already extricated herself from her companion’s grip, much to Sebastian’s annoyance, Valmont replied: “Since the seventeenth century—through a marriage into the local nobility. Like so many others at the time, we were at war with the king, or rather his treacherous ministers, and our two families decided that a pincer from north and south would be able to take what we most desired.” Valmont stared up at the painted ceiling above, decorated with scenes from Greek mythology in which nymphs were being pursued by rapacious satyrs and smiled.

  “I believe that we took more or less everything we wanted. It was the twelfth Marquis who redecorated the chateau in a variant of the baroque more suited to his tastes.”

  “Very impressive,” muttered Sebastian, trailing behind Jeanne. Valmont could see that he was already overawed.

  “Exquisite,” said Jeanne, her green eyes glittering. She placed one hand lightly on Valmont’s arm, causing a spasm of pleasure to pulse through the limb so that his crop twitched against his riding boot. “I would love to see more.”

  “And so you shall, Jeanne,” he murmured. “And so you shall.” The fact that he, unlike the satyrs above him, could not take her here and now as he wished added to his pleasure in some perverse way, making her even more desirable.

  With each room they traversed, that pleasure grew and grew as Valmont knew that it would. Sebastian’s steps became slower and slower and he began to dawdle behind, his brief assertion of power in the entrance hallway increasingly emasculated. Jeanne, on the other hand, became more animated, asking him questions about different works of art. Valmont took great care to answer her courteously, displaying his own great knowledge of his home.

  At last he came to the glory of the house and, with a dramatic flourish, opened two large, white doors. “This,” he told Jeanne, not even deigning to pay attention to Sebastian anymore, “is the masterpiece of my chateau.”

  Standing to one side, he let her enter before him and looked on with undiminished satisfaction as she gasped, her hand lifting unconsciously to her lips.

  “This is my very own Grande Galerie, les Galerie des Glaces.”

  And indeed it was an astonishing chamber of mirrors. The room was vast, much larger than any other they had encountered so far, the beams of the roof covered in gold and silver with elaborate paintings on the panels between. But it was the mirrors that dominated the view—huge, crystal clear plates that shone and dazzled, the reflected light also caught in the great chandeliers that descended to a point high above their heads.

  “Incredible,” Jeanne sighed. Valmont was vaguely aware that Sebastian had caught up behind them, and he glanced at the other man. There was a look almost of despair in the Englishman’s eyes that made Valmont exult. He had won.

  “You know the Galerie at Versailles?” he asked Jeanne. She nodded, her eyes greedily taking in every detail of the beautiful room. Extending his hand, he waited for her to place her own fingers in his and led her forward. This time there was no opposition from Sebastian who merely stood, dumbly, in the doorway, an unwelcome visitor at this feast for the eyes.

  “A distant relative was involved in the designs for parts of Versailles, and when he visited de Tour he
proposed this very room. In those days, mirrored glass was the most precious of substances, with its production being controlled by the Venetians. Indeed, my ancestor employed a Venetian, Giovanni Baptista Tiepelo, to oversee the work.”

  As he promenaded, hand in hand, through the room with Jeanne at his side, he watched her reflection in the mirrors as they passed. In her heels, the top of her head was just below his eyes and her elegant form was framed against his white shirt. Seeing his own face, sardonic and handsome in the glass, she turned to face him, her eyes glowing with pleasure.

  “It’s wonderful,” she said.

  “Ah, but not used as much as it should be,” Valmont replied with a mock sigh. “I shall make sure that you take full advantage of it while you are my guests.” On an impulse, he placed one hand on her narrow waist and began to move slowly around her in a waltz. With only the slightest resistance at first, she followed his steps daintily, laughing as she did so.

  For a while, Valmont swept her round the room, humming the tune to an old melody, half watching her in front of him, half watching her reflection in the great mirrors that lined the room.

  When he came to a halt, both of them saw Sebastian standing before them. He was considerably taller than Valmont, and the fact that he had managed to cross the space from the entrance without being heard shocked the Marquis for a second, throwing him out of his equilibrium. That effect was only enhanced when he looked into the Englishman’s face and saw the barely repressed fury there.

  “Monsieur le Marquis,” he said, his voice formal and clipped. Despite his anger, he seemed to have regained his composure in a different, subtle way, and Valmont was aware again of that intense intelligence that he’d glimpsed when they were gaming. Eloise was right: this Sebastian Rider wasn’t as much of a buffoon as he pretended to be.

  “You’ve been very kind,” Sebastian continued, “but our journey has been quite an arduous one. I’m sure that Madame Duval will agree with me that it would be a good idea for us to refresh ourselves in our rooms, and then perhaps we can continue to see your impressive home. Jeanne?” He held out his hand, and there was something in his posture that indicated he would brook no opposition.

  To Valmont’s surprise, Jeanne gave him an apologetic smile and then deftly removed herself from his grasp. Reaching out to take Sebastian’s hand, she looked ambiguously back at the Marquis as the pair walked away.

  “Thank you, Donatien,” she said. “I’ll look forward to what else you have to show me.”

  Valmont was dumbfounded for a moment. Who did this upstart Englishman think he was? It had been quite clear that the overwhelming grandeur of Chateau de Tour had beaten down the inner man, no matter what strength his outer form possessed, but that last act had not shown any sign of weakness. Quite the contrary. Sebastian had caught him off guard, that was all: he would have to take care not to let that happen again.

  Annoyed with himself, Valmont watched Latour arrive to lead them to their rooms before quickly turning and passing through a hidden door in the Galerie. He then took a complicated route to a private staircase, one of many throughout the Chateau. When he came to his room, he pushed the door open.

  Eloise was still on the bed, of course, naked and spread-eagled, each of her ankles and wrists bound to the four posters of his bed. How long had he been gone? Two hours? Three? She didn’t appear to have moved at all—her self-control never ceased to surprise him. She looked as beautiful as ever, her sex splayed between her parted legs, her breasts rising and falling with her breath and her hair a golden halo on the pillow, yet after only a short time with Jeanne Duval he couldn’t help but feel that there was something too coarse about the pleasures the two of them shared. He had, he felt, grown too jaded.

  Crossing to the bed, he saw her blue eyes watching him. “You’re awake,” he observed, relieved to be speaking in French again.

  “Yes, Master,” she replied.

  He sat down beside her and began to release the first of her cuffs across her left wrist.

  “There’ll be no need for that, not for the next few days,” he told her, matter of factly. As he released the leather strap, he frowned slightly at the faint red mark it had left. “I’ll have to be more gentle with you if you’re to have another chance with Rider. We don’t want to scare him off, not yet.”

  Eloise gave him a rather strange look as he unbound her second wrist, rubbing the skin gently. “They arrived, then?”

  “They did indeed. I’ve just been showing them the Galerie and they’ve gone to their rooms. We’ll meet again for dinner.”

  “We? Is this royal we, or am I to join you rather than stay out of the way of your plans?”

  Valmont smiled at this. “Oh, you are very much part of my plans, my luscious Lupa.” He kissed her briefly, almost tenderly, on her head before moving down to her ankles. She sat up, watching him with that same, peculiar expression as she massaged life back into her limbs. “What is it?”

  “You’re not seriously thinking of paying ten million for a night with that woman, are you?”

  Valmont burst into laughter. “Of course not! That would be a little too insane even for me. No, I don’t intend to pay a single cent for the pleasure of Jeanne Duval. I shall use her in the most delightful ways possible, and I’ll humiliate that stupid companion of hers into the bargain.”

  For a moment, Eloise frowned at this before she regained her composure. Valmont’s eyes were too sharp, however. “What is it?” he demanded.

  To his astonishment, she merely shook her head. He considered climbing onto the bed and fucking her there, hard, so that she would remember who was the master here: the privileges he would extend to her would over the next few days had very certain limits. However, Valmont had also decided, now that Jeanne Duval was here at Chateau de Tour, to restrict his carnal pleasures. A degree of self-denial would make the final consummation so much sweeter.

  In any case, he knew Eloise far too well—more intimately than any other man. “Don’t worry,” he told her. “When I’ve finished with Jeanne Duval, I’ll let you do whatever you want with Sebastian Rider.”

  Chapter Eight: Hayden

  Hayden was becoming increasingly frustrated as he went in search of Karla. She’d promised to meet up with him after an hour, but now the afternoon was wearing on and still there was no sign of her. She’d refused to do anything more than make small talk to him as they’d been led to their rooms by Latour. Because of his irritation, he’d not paid proper attention to the route (Valmont seemed to have taken particular delight in placing them on opposite sides of the chateau) and now he was lost.

  He was surprised at how relieved he was when he’d finally encountered Latour. Under any other circumstances, this clumsy, ugly giant of a man (How tall is he? Hayden asked himself. He can’t be much under seven foot!) would have been the least desirable person on the planet.

  “Ah, my good fellow,” Hayden said, affecting the charm that had been so successful until recently in his guise as Sebastian Rider. “This damned house. Lovely and all, but now I can’t find my way to Madame Duval’s room.”

  Turning slowly, Latour stared at him with large eyes. Hayden would have been tempted to describe them as bovine, but he’d never seen a cow that could look at him with such a whiff of contempt which was soon squashed. The manservant’s hair was thick and black but with the odd, strange patch of white, as ill-formed as his face with its huge, lumpy nose and the peculiar patches of skin as though formed from badly healed scars. He was well-dressed, no doubt with everything custom made on the orders of the Marquis, but his black jacket and trousers were ungainly, giving the impression when he walked of muscles bulging in slightly the wrong places.

  “I wonder if you could help me,” he said patiently when Latour didn’t respond. Great! He thought to himself. He doesn’t speak English. “Où est la... chambre du… de madame Duval?” he asked in hesitant French. Even two months in France around Karla and her perfect linguistics seemed not to have rubbed
off on him: part of the problem was that any woman they’d met was more than willing to talk to Hayden in English in the hope that he would more quickly begin speaking the language of love.

  Latour raised a thick, meaty arm and pointed back in the direction from which Hayden had just walked, causing him to curse silently. Then the giant turned around, looking for all the world like Lurch in one of those old, black and white sitcoms, and ponderously walked away.

  It took Hayden another twenty minutes to find the room he was looking for, involving opening and closing any number of doors. (How many bedrooms did this place have?) At last he opened one and peered in to see Karla on her hands and knees beside the bed.

  “You could knock,” she said tersely, apparently feeling along the underside of a low table next to the large, four-poster bed. Hayden had seen too many four-poster beds in the last half hour to consider them exotic any more, but the sight of Karla, head down and backside up, was almost too tempting.

  “What? And miss such a great opportunity?” She did indeed look lovely. In preparation for dinner, she wore a black evening dress, cut low at the back but rising almost to her neck at the front, a long slit in its side revealing a toned leg and her bare, pretty feet.

  “In your dreams,” she said sourly, immediately pouring cold water on the fantasies that were beginning to form in his brain. She pulled her head up and, not paying him the slightest attention, scrutinised something she held in her fingers as she stood beside the bed.

  The terse verbal slap he’d received reminded him how angry he was at her earlier display with Valmont. Working himself into a state of righteous indignation, he puffed out his chest and began to speak.

  “I can’t believe what you were doing down there. Jesus! Could you have made your intentions any more obvious? I’m pretty surprised you didn’t just jump him in that preposterous hall of mirrors. I don’t know what you’re up to, but we need to talk, K-”