The Courtesan

by Susan Carroll

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Praise for Susan Carroll

  Read on for a sneak peak at Miri’s story, the next captivating novel in the Cheney Sisters Trilogy!

  Don't miss these three captivating novels in the Dark Queen series

  About the Author

  Other Books by Susan Carroll

  Copyright Page

  This one is for my real-life heroes:

  My big brother, Tony, and my outlaws, Jerry, Tom, and Pete.

  Love you guys, always.

  Prologue

  Mist rose off the Seine, the ghostly vapor drifting over the banks of Paris, obscuring streets that were already a labyrinth in the fading light. But the woman stealing through the haze appeared oblivious to both the perils of becoming lost and the damp chill of the autumn evening.

  Shrouded in a hooded gray cloak that fell to her ankles, her face was hidden behind a black velvet mask, the kind court beauties used to shield their complexions. It completely shielded her identity as well, only the sparkle of her eyes visible and a few blond wisps of hair. Wooden pattens protected her brocade shoes from the dirt of the streets as she marched forward with a sure step, unaware of the man who followed her.

  Captain Nicolas Remy hung back as far as he dared without losing sight of the lady in the misty evening. He was clad in a dark jerkin and black venetians that blended with the oncoming night. His worn garments and his dusty boots appeared to have seen better days, as had the captain himself. Tangled dark blond hair spilled across his brown eyes, his lean features obscured by a heavy beard that had been allowed to run wild. With both sword and dagger affixed to his belt, he was a dangerous-looking man, even by the standards of Paris.

  Passersby gave him a wide berth, making it difficult for him to lose himself in the crowd as he dogged the footsteps of the lady in gray. The streets were swiftly emptying of all other company. Artisans and street vendors scurried for home. Shutters of shop fronts slammed shut, all of respectable Paris retreating behind locked doors.

  Captain Remy would soon stand out like a lone soldier left surviving on a battlefield, but he could not risk putting any more distance between himself and the woman. She had a distinct advantage. She knew where she was going.

  Any knowledge he had ever had of this cursed city, he had done his best to forget. Remy was not only unfamiliar with the streets, he was not even certain he was following the right woman. He angled a glance at his companion, a rangy youth of about eighteen years who went by the sobriquet Martin le Loup.

  A fitting name, Remy thought. The lad bore much of the aspect of a wolf with his mane of sable-colored hair, sharp features, and green eyes. Although the Wolf styled himself as an “adventurer, a gentleman of fortune,” he looked regrettably more like what he was, a scoundrel and a cutpurse. But Remy would have trusted the boy with his life. He already had on many occasions.

  However, this time he wondered if his clever Wolf had made a grave mistake. As the woman led him deeper into narrower streets, Remy tensed with the apprehension that he was being led into the sort of trap laid for many an unwary traveler in Paris, lured on by a beautiful woman only to be set upon and robbed.

  Remy’s hand shifted to the hilt of his sword and he muttered to his youthful guide, “Are you certain that this is the lady I sent you to find? Because if you’ve made some sort of mistake—”

  “No mistake, Captain!” Wolf protested, looking wounded that Remy should doubt him. “I swear on the grave of my father . . . or at least I would if I knew who he was. That is indeed the lady you asked me to seek, your Mistress Gabrielle Cheney.”

  Remy allowed himself a moment of regret. No, she had never been his Gabrielle, nor was she ever likely to be.

  “She is said to be the most dazzling woman in all of Paris,” Wolf said, kissing his fingertips. “Do you recognize nothing about her?”

  Remy’s eyes narrowed, studying the distant form of the cloaked woman. He tried to discern some familiar gesture or movement of the young enchantress he had once known. But it had been over three years since he had last seen Gabrielle, not since that long-ago summer in that mysterious place known as the Faire Isle.

  He had heard that Gabrielle had changed, the warm, passionate girl transformed into a woman, seductive and dangerous. They said that she was consumed with cold ambition. They said that she had grown more adept at intrigue than the Dark Queen, Catherine de Medici herself. They said . . .

  Remy’s mouth set in a terse line. He simply did not want to believe all the things that were being said of Gabrielle. It was far too painful. But he could hardly escape the fact that people who ventured abroad at this hour were either remarkably careless of their lives or else bent upon some purpose that would not bear the light of day.

  So which was true of Gabrielle? All he had to do was overtake her and ask her. But he was reluctant to do so. After so long an absence, he didn’t want their reunion to take place here in the street. She believed him to be dead and perhaps it would be better if he remained that way.

  “Just let her go,” something inside him urged. “Don’t entangle her in this desperate quest that your life has become.”

  The voice was a faint echo of the man he’d once been, honorable and chivalrous. But any nobility inside him had been killed that hot August here in Paris, three years ago, a night of blood, betrayal, and madness. The mere thought of St. Bartholomew’s Eve was enough to make his stomach clench, his brow go cold with sweat.

  Remy thrust the nightmarish memories aside and continued doggedly after Gabrielle. Despite the risks, he needed Gabrielle Cheney’s help with the dangerous enterprise that had brought him back to the city. But first, he needed to be sure of her.

  As Gabrielle stalked onward, the houses towering around them grew more decrepit, the street more filthy. Little as Remy knew of Paris, it was obvious even to him they were plunging into one of the less savory quarters of the city.

  Beside him, Wolf growled in a low voice, “The rue de Morte? Have a care, monsieur. Even the worst of rogues dread to come here by night. Your lady must be quite mad to venture here alone, without even the company of her maid. Has she always been this reckless?”

  “Always,” Remy murmured with a grim smile. At least that much about Gabrielle had not changed. “She once stole my sword and prepared to fight an entire cadre of—”

  “A cadre of what?” Wolf asked with great interest.

  Remy already regretted his impulsive words. The doings on Faire Isle that summer had been strange enough to him. If he were to recount some of those tales, even the insouciant Wolf would become alarmed.

  Remy was spared the necessity of answering when they lost sight of Gabrielle in the mists. Both he and Wolf came to an abrupt halt, listening. The street was clear of the daytime clatter from the traffic of carts, horses, and mules. Rem
y could hear the hollow echo of Gabrielle’s shoes in the distance.

  “There!” Wolf pointed across the street.

  The rising moon pierced the clouds enough for Remy to make out Gabrielle’s shadow. She approached the iron gates of what had once been a great manor done in the Gothic style, set behind high stone walls, the gatehouse flanked by pepperpot turrets. The rambling stone house bore a ghostly aspect in the moonlight and mist, many of the windows boarded over, the garden wall crumbled and broken in places.

  Nearby lots were vacant despite the current rage for construction that had seized hold of Paris. The house stood isolated as though the rest of the city shrank from drawing too near.

  “Nom de Dieu!” Remy heard Wolf gasp.

  “What is it?” Remy asked.

  “The—the Maison d’Esprit.” Wolf whispered, pointing a trembling finger in the direction of the imposing house.

  “What! You know this place?”

  Wolf gave a jerky nod, his eyes full moons in the sharp oval of his face. “The place . . . it—it has a dreadful reputation, monsieur. The house once belonged to a powerful bishop who fell under the spell of a witch. She enchanted him, caused him to fall desperately in love with her, forget all his holy vows. He made her his mistress, kept her hidden away in this house for many years. She even bore him children, daughters like herself, evil witches.”

  Wolf shuddered. “Finally one of the bishop’s servants summoned the courage to inform the authorities. Witch-hunters raided the place, seized the sorceress and her daughters, dragged them away to be executed. Everyone thought that would break the spell for the bishop, but the poor man hanged himself in the garret, driven mad by the witch.”

  Wolf rolled his eyes heavenward and crossed himself. The boy had a penchant for high drama and enjoyed terrifying himself with any legends he chanced to hear, the more gruesome the better.

  If Gabrielle was familiar with the story, it hadn’t daunted her. Remy made out her cloaked figure heading straight up to the gates. After a moment’s hesitation, Remy risked getting closer. Moving stealthily across the street, he positioned himself behind an ancient oak in one of the vacant lots.

  Wolf scrambled after him, not so quietly. Remy shot the boy a quelling frown. The dark house waited in the distance, a silent shadow, not a sign of life stirring. What could Gabrielle possibly want in this wretched place?

  “Who lives there now?” Remy demanded in a low aside to his companion.

  “No one,” Wolf whispered hoarsely. “The place is haunted and cursed besides. Before she died, the witch declared that anyone who ever enters these grounds would go as mad as her lover did.”

  Remy didn’t believe in curses, but there was something disquieting about the abandoned manor that caused the back of his neck to prickle. He felt an odd sense of relief when Gabrielle passed by the iron gates.

  But Remy should have known locked gates would not be enough to stop Gabrielle Cheney. She moved along the stone wall until she found a large break. With a furtive glance over her shoulder, she gathered up her skirts and climbed through. As she vanished from sight, Remy stepped out to follow.

  Wolf frantically seized hold of his arm. “No, Captain! You must not go in there after her. The place is cursed, I tell you.”

  “Don’t be absurd, boy.” Remy attempted to shake him off, fearing that he might lose Gabrielle, not to any curse, but to the mist and darkness.

  “Ah, please, Captain! Don’t you see that it is too late? Your lady must already be seized with madness or else why would she go into that terrible place?”

  Why indeed? Remy had no idea what would draw Gabrielle to this neglected wreck of a house, but he intended to find out. However, it was clear he would have to go on alone. Wolf was not indulging his usual flair for melodrama. The boy’s terror was genuine, his face pale, his fingers trembling. Wolf might not flinch from tangling with the fiercest brigand, but he had a deathly fear of anything hinting at the supernatural.

  As Remy pried the boy’s fingers loose and commanded Wolf to wait behind, his conscience pricked him because he knew he had been less than honest with the lad. When he had first sent Wolf to find Gabrielle Cheney, there was one significant fact Remy had neglected to tell him.

  The lady was something of a witch herself.

  Chapter One

  Gabrielle Cheney peered through the slits of her mask, picking her way carefully along the path overgrown with weeds. The courtyard of the Maison d’Esprit was silent as a cemetery and twice as eerie. The moon cast a pale light over moss-blackened fountains and broken statuary. Some headless saint presided over the withered remains of a rose garden. The flowers were long gone, but the thorns were not, one branch catching at the hem of Gabrielle’s cloak.

  As she bent to free herself, she was beset by the troubling sensation that had afflicted her all evening. The feeling that she was being followed. Straightening, she curled her fingers over the hilt of the sword hidden beneath her cloak and whirled around. The iron gate and stone wall were nothing more than vague outlines in the fog-bound night. But as she stared, another figure took shape, that of a tall proud warrior.

  Her hand fell away from the sword and she uttered a soft choked cry. Not of fear, but more of despair because she had seen the silhouette of this man far too many times in her dreams. She took a step forward only to check the motion, knowing it would do her no good. There would be no smile to greet her, no strong arms to welcome her because he didn’t exist, this phantom man. All she would find was empty space and silence.

  Ghosts left no footfalls and memories cast no shadows, except perhaps on the human heart. She watched the figure of the man evaporate into the mist as he always did. Gabrielle had never once seen his face, but she knew beyond certainty who he was.

  Nicolas Remy, the captain from Navarre. Whether it was his ghost she kept seeing or only a figment of her own tormented imagination, the effect was always the same. Gabrielle’s heart constricted with sorrow and guilt.

  “Oh, Remy,” she murmured. “I’ve asked your forgiveness a thousand times. What more do you want from me? Why can’t you leave me in peace?”

  She knew she would never gain any answer to that question, at least not in this damp, misty courtyard. With one last glance behind her, Gabrielle turned and hastened toward the house.

  The stone manor loomed ahead of her, splintered wood and a great hole where the front door should be, gaping like the jagged mouth of some fierce beast ready to devour her. But Gabrielle feared the ghosts of her own memories far more than she did the sinister aspect of the house. Besides, she knew the truth behind the legends of the Maison d’Esprit far better than the superstitious Parisians who blessed themselves every time they had to pass those rusting gates.

  Easing past the shattered remains of the door, she entered the house, the darkness swallowing her. The boarded-up windows blocked out what pale moonlight there was to be had. Gabrielle stripped off her mask and reached beneath her cloak for the large pouch fastened to her belt. She groped until she found the candle set in its small brass holder, along with the tinderbox she had brought. After much fumbling between flint and wick, she managed to coax the taper to light.

  The tiny flame spluttered to life, casting a small circle of illumination. Gabrielle moved deeper into the room that yawned before her, the grit crunching beneath her feet. Holding up the candle, she surveyed the wreckage of the once-magnificent great hall. The bishop had done very handsomely by his mistress until the witch-hunters had come.

  A beautiful high table of carved oak had been pulled from the dais and overturned, the broken remains of chairs and stools littered nearby. Tapestries had been dragged from the walls and sliced to ribbons, the musty scent of rotting wool heavy in the air. Even the iron candelabrum had been wrenched from the ceiling and left with its chain snaking around it. Everything was coated with thick cobwebs as though time had sought to weave a shroud for this house.

  The witch-hunters had done their work well. Gabrielle
shivered with a mingling of horror and pity, remembering the night those fiends had invaded her own home on Faire Isle. She and her sisters, Ariane and Miri, had only been saved by the intervention of the Comte de Renard, the man who eventually became Ariane’s husband.

  But no such rescue had come to poor Giselle Lascelles and her daughters. How terrified those women must have been, dragged from their home, crying and shrieking to meet the worst sort of torture and death that could befall any daughter of the earth. All of them lost, save one . . .

  The appearance of the great hall was calculated to make any chance intruder believe that the Maison d’Esprit was uninhabited by anyone but ghosts. Gabrielle was one of the few who knew better. Lifting her skirts, she moved to the stairs stretching upward. The small glow of her candle could not reach far enough to penetrate the upper regions of the landing, to detect whoever or whatever might be lurking there.

  “Hello?” she called tentatively.

  Her voice echoed, swallowed up by the vast silence of the house. “Cassandra Lascelles?” Gabrielle called more loudly.

  She was met with more unnerving silence, then she thought she heard a floorboard creak. Gabrielle moistened her lips and tried again. “Cass? Are you there? It is me . . . Gabrielle Cheney. I need to talk to—”

  She checked abruptly at a low rumbling sound. Staring up at the landing, she caught the shadow of movement. Her heart leapt into her throat as two baleful yellow eyes glared back at her, the rumbling escalating into a fearsome growl. The creature sprang forward, a large brownish-black mastiff with a heavy muscular body.

  “Merde!” Gabrielle cried.

  As it bounded down the stairs, Gabrielle scrambled back, nearly dropping her candle. Hot wax splashed over the brass holder, searing her hand. She winced with pain, but managed to keep a grip on the taper.

  Retreating across the room, she stumbled up against an aumbry, the wooden shelves gouging against her spine. Her pursuer skidded to a halt a few feet away, cornering her against the cupboard. Baring cruel-looking incisors, it snarled.

  “C-Cerberus. Good d-dog,” Gabrielle quavered. “Don’t you remember me?”