"Agnes! What does she know?"
"A lot. She came to see me, you know."
"She didn't! When?"
"A few days ago. The day after you told her and Simon all about what had happened to drive you away—about Nevers and Louvois."
Last week Gabrielle had at last allowed the duc de Nevers a few closely supervised minutes with his grandson. That afternoon, she had told Agnes and Simon everything, and in telling them she had, in some strange way, freed herself of the past, and of the hatred she bore for Dominique's grandfather.
Max was laughing against her hair. "That little buxom urchin accused me of being as blind as a one-eyed mole, unable to see the obvious right under my nose—which was that you loved me, and that I was breaking your heart."
"You were breaking my heart, Max. I was so miserable all these weeks thinking you no longer loved me. I couldn't forgive—"
"Shh." He pressed his fingers against her lips to stem the flow of words.
She had been about to say that she couldn't forgive herself for hurting him. But he thought she was going to say she couldn't forgive him for the marquise de Tesse, and the look on his face reminded her of Dominique when he had been naughty and came to her seeking absolution and reassurance.
He picked up her hand and sandwiched it between his own. "Of all the mistakes I've made in my life—and there have been a whole soup pot full of them—the one I most want to have back is the marquise de Tesse. I was miserable before it happened and I was miserable afterward. I was even miserable during the act, if such a thing is possible, and I swear to you, Gabrielle, by all that's holy, that I will never, ever, even look lustfully at another woman in my life." He put her hand over his heart and held it there.
She had let him make his act of contrition because it warmed some tender spot in her to hear the words. But now Gabrielle waved her hand—the one that wasn't pressed against his heart—acrjoss the air as if shooing away a mosquito. "Oh, pooh! I no longer care about that."
His eyes widened in astonishment. "But—"
"Agnes said it would have served me right if you'd taken a dozen mistresses. She said I was a ninny lobcocks if I expected you to be as celibate as a monk after I had disappeared from your life. She said you couldn't be expected to know you'd ever see me again, and she thinks you're a saint for taking me back."
"A saint!"
"Her exact words were, 'May pork and peas choke me if Monsieur Max shouldn't be canonized for putting up with your foolishness.' "
He laughed, cuddling her against him. Then he threaded his hands through her hair and tipped her face up to meet his lips.
His kiss began gently, but the fires of passion, always so easily ignited between them, burst into flame. It was Gabri-elle who finally pulled away from him. "We mustn't, cheri. You're feverish and weak, and if you up and die on me now I would truly never forgive you."
"My head does still hurt like bloody hell," he admitted. He brushed the hair from her temple with the tips of his fingers. "Agnes said something else. She said I already knew well how to survive, but that I would never understand a thing about living, or about loving, until I learned compassion. Until I learned how to forgive."
Gabrielle bit her lower lip and lights of amusement danced in her eyes. "That's odd ... she said the very same thing to me."
Max smiled and nuzzled her with his chin. "She's a very wise woman, that Agnes." And his mouth sought hers in a tender kiss, as they told each other in this ageless fashion how they wanted, needed, loved each other.
After a moment their mouths parted long enough to let them settle themselves more comfortably among the pillows. "Do you believe now, ma mie, that I love you?" Max said.
"I believe," Gabrielle answered solemnly. "And do you believe—"
He stopped her with his lips. "Of course I do," he said against her mouth, giving her that smile she loved so much. "How could you not love the best lover in all of France, probably in all the world?"
"Are you the best?"
"Yes. And I can prove it to you."
And then he did.
Chapter 23
Gabrielle sat up in bed and watched her husband as he dressed by the light of a small oil lamp. In the muted glow she could barely make out the scar along his hairline left by the musket ball three months before.
The bread riots of that spring were, from the perspective of this July of 1789, being called a revolution. But, although the orators of the park benches and cafes in the Palais Royal had hailed it as the birth of a new era, the price of bread had continued to rise.
"Must you leave so soon?" Gabrielle asked, not caring a thing now about liberty or bread or what the king of France would or would not do on the morrow, for she had seen little of her husband during the last two months. "It's not yet dawn and you got so little sleep last night."
He pulled his shirt on over his head and came to sit on the bed beside her. He traced the edge of the sheet, which she had pulled up over her naked breasts. "I didn't come home to sleep. I came to make long and passionate love to my irresistible wife."
"Which you have done. Several times." She put her hand on his bare chest where his shirt gaped open at the neck. "Take me back to Versailles with you."
He brought her hand to his lips. "It's too dangerous, you know that. You wouldn't want to bring Dominique and yet you'd worry about leaving him behind with just the servants. Besides, I won't be able to concentrate if I'm worrying about you." He smiled at her. "Just missing you and wanting to be with you are enough of a distraction as it is."
In May the parliamentary body, the Estates-General, had at last been summoned to meet at Versailles. Max was to have been one of the deputies representing the Second Estate, or the noble class. Gabrielle and Dominique had been at Versailles to watch the procession of the opening session. The First Estate, the clergy in their black and red robes, came in first, followed by the nobility dressed in white with gold-braided cloaks and plumed hats, and wearing swords. But, although Gabrielle had stood On tiptoe, craning to see above the heads of the crowd, there had been no sign of Max.
She had begun to grow worried by the time the Third Estate, the deputies who were to represent the people, marched in. That was when she saw him, his tall, lithe figure in white and gold satin standing out among the black suits of the bourgeois, and her heart swelled with a fierce pride. She had lifted Dominique high above her head so that he might see his father. "Look, mon fils," she said to him. "Look at your papa marching for liberty.''
From the first day of its meeting there was within the Estates-General a tug-of-war for power. The bourgeois against the nobility and the clergy; the bourgeois and the nobility against the king. One day in June, the king had locked the deputies out of their meeting place, posting troops with bayonets at the doors, so the delegates had met in a tennis court to declare themselves to be a National Assembly and vowed not to disband until France had a constitution.
Louis XVI, his monarchy threatened, decided to fight back. His latest move had been to dismiss Necker, his finance minister, who was popular with the people because he had asked the king to tax the nobility. Earlier, Louis had called up regiments of foreign mercenaries to ring Versailles, and it was now rumored that the Bastille was being readied to accommodate mass arrests.
"Max," Gabrielle said, her fingers tightening around his, "perhaps you shouldn't go back. If it's that dangerous—"
"There are twelve hundred of us delegates. He can't arrest all of us." He flashed his cocky smile. "Besides, we voted ourselves immune to arrest."
Gabrielle sniffed. "And no doubt you think the king's musket balls will bounce right off your chests."
Laughing, he bestowed a kiss on her nose and stood up. As he sauntered over to the commode, Gabrielle watched the play of muscles in his naked thighs. Her smile turned into a sigh of desire as he leaned over to look in the mirror while he brushed his hair, and his shirttail rode up, exposing a generous section of his bare buttocks.
Gabrie
lle slid out of bed and slipped into her dressing gown, although she left it hanging open down the front. She came up behind him and pressed her bare chest against his back. She moved her breasts in sensuous circles, luxuriating in the feel of his shirt scratching across her tightening nipples. She rubbed her hands across the taut cheeks of his bottom, kneading them gently.
Her hands slid around to the front of him—
He grabbed her wrists, turning around. "Gabrielle, I'm trying to get dressed. Pretend that you are a properly submissive wife and pour me something to drink. Brandy. And don't lecture me about the hour," he added when her mouth opened.
She went obediently to the silver serving cart that had been pushed up beside the bed, but she poured him wine, not brandy. "Tell me what you do all day," she said, setting the glass on top of the commode and helping him tie his hair back with a narrow black riband.
"Sit and daydream about you."
"Besides that."
"Mostly we yell and argue a lot." He laughed. "A full-fledged meeting of the National Assembly is about as noisy as an open fish market. Although usually we meet in smaller groups. I'm in charge of a committee that's supposed to be drafting a Declaration of the Rights of Man. So far we've managed to agree on one sentence—"Men are born and remain free and equal in their rights"—and why are you looking daggers at me all of a sudden?"
She faced him, her hands on her hips. "You seemed to have forgotten, Monsieur le Depute, to include in your declaration one entire half of the human race."
"Huh?"
She flung her arms up in the air. "Women, Max. Won't women be considered born free and equal in this new government of yours?"
"Well . . ."He wrapped an arm around her waist, drawing her tightly against him. "Have a heart, Gabrielle. I'd be laughed out of the assembly if I suggested we add the word 'women' to the Declaration."
She pretended to pout. "It seems so unfair. We women are never allowed a say in anything."
He nuzzled the top of her head with his chin. "There is one place, ma mie, where you have absolute power over me. You command and I tremble—quite literally, I might add— to obey."
Her dark, flaring brows swooped upward. "Hunh. And where, pray tell, is that?"
Lifting her in his arms, he carried her to the bed, where he laid her down gently within the nest of silken sheets. "Here," he said. "In my bed. Or"—and his mouth stretched into that devilish smile—"whatever serves as my bed."
He straightened and pulled off his shirt.
Stretching like a cat warming herself in the sun, Gabrielle actually purred. "I thought you had somewhere important to go, Monsieur le Vicomte."
The smile Max gave her overflowed with love. "France," he said, "can wait."
He came into her arms. She rose up on her side and pressed him back into the pillows. She felt bold of a sudden; masterful and mastering. '
Her mouth fluttered over his face, her lashes caressing his cheeks like butterfly wings, her lips dipping down to draw nectar from his eyes, his brows, his mouth. She ran her tongue along the curving line of his hard jaw, traced the lobe of his ear. She raised her head and looked at him.
"That's a rather self-satisfied smile you're wearing."
The smile deepened, putting a dimple in one cheek, and she kissed that, too. "Not satisfied," he murmured into her hair. "Not yet."
"Oh, so my kisses aren't enough?"
"I love your kisses."
"But you want more than kisses?"
"Well ... I wouldn't turn down anything else you cared to offer me."
She moved a knee between his legs, gently grinding it into the short, springing curls. Her hand wrapped around his rising, swelling erection, proof of his desire, proof of her desirableness.
"This." She tightened her grip, almost but not quite to the point of pain, and he drew in a sharp breath that ended in a moan. "You want this to be satisfied."
"Only you," he said, his breath ragged, "can do it."
Still gripping him, tightly, for she knew he liked it hard and a bit rough, she brought her mouth down to the hollow in his throat. She could feel his blood pumping, hot and swift, beneath his skin and, as she sucked on his neck, she began to stroke his length, vigorously and rapidly, in time with that pulsating beat.
He moaned. "Jesus . . ."
Moving his hand over the rising curve of her hip, he slipped his fingers into the crack of her buttocks, tracing the soft flesh down and up between her legs, pressing into her from behind, and she shuddered as she always did at the first touch of his fingers there.
For a moment it seemed she hung poised in the air, connected to him, connected to reality, only by that thrusting, flicking finger. She was swirling, rising, drifting toward the edge, and she pulled herself sharply back because she wasn't ready to go over it just yet.
She shifted her position so that she straddled him now, her thighs on either side of his legs. She sat up tall and straight, looking imperiously down on him, and again she felt that heady sense of power, of possessiveness. She let her eyes roam over him, starting with his face; claiming as hers those eyes of molten silver, the hard mouth that parted with each breath he took in and pushed out, rough and ragged; moving down his chest, ridged and corded with muscles that rose and fell jerkily; and down to his vigorous maleness that sprang up thick and long between her knees.
Arching her back, she pressed her hands to his sides and pushed her bottom down his thighs, lowering her head until her lips almost touched the tip of his swollen manhood. "Mine," she breathed.
"Gabrielle . . . ?" he said tentatively, threading his fingers through her hair, for she had never done this before.
"I want to," she said. "If you do."
His fingers tightened, pressing down on her head.
"Yesss . . ." he hissed, as slowly, slowly she drew him into her mouth.
He was iron encased in velvet, rigid bone and smooth flesh. She explored him with her lips, her tongue, the inside of her mouth, discovering new sensations of pleasure in the giving of it. Pausing for a brief moment, she looked up, past the tensed, clenched muscles of his stomach and his heaving chest, to his face. His eyes were squeezed tightly shut, his mouth twisted into a blissful grimace.
When her mouth enveloped him again, he started to tremble. Suddenly he lifted her up and off" him, rolling her onto her back. He loomed over her, his hands pressing deep in the mattress, bracketing her head, his face over hers, and he thrust into her so hard that she cried out—not with pain, but ecstasy.
"I," he said.
He pulled all the way out of her and drove into her again, deeper.
"Love," she said on a gasp.
He pulled out again and stopped there, the tip of him barely brushing her quivering mound, and he kept his eyes wide open and locked with hers as he drove into her a final time.
"You," they finished together as the driving tremors of passion and release coursed through them.
❧
The next evening Gabrielle sat on a window seat, her son kneeling beside her, and looked down on a river Seine pockmarked with rain. They were in her favorite room, a small receiving salon next to tier bedchamber, enjoying a late snack of chocolate and sweet biscuits. Although it was the thirteenth day of July, they had a fire burning because the day was cool and damp.
Dominique pointed to the quay below, where small forges glowed on every corner. "Maman, why are those men making horseshoes out in the street?"
"They aren't making horseshoes, petit. They're hammering pikes."
During the last couple of days, since the finance minister Necker had been dismissed, the revolution had again turned ugly. Workers from the faubourgs roved in gangs armed with cudgels and pikes, chanting "Cheap bread!" and "Arms to the people!" One of the city prisons had been attacked, and several of the hated customs barriers had been burned. Gabrielle, remembering her terrifying experience on the day of the bread riot, stayed off the streets and kept Dominique close by her side. She missed Max terribly, but s
he was glad now she had not gone with him to Versailles.
Suddenly a soft knock on the door startled her, and she jumped up, her hand fluttering to her throat, her heart beating fast. The majordomo, Aumont, entered the room on silent feet, and Gabrielle sternly admonished herself for turning into a bundle of vaporish nerves.
Aumont bowed. "Madame, there is a gentleman come from Versailles asking to see you." A slight curl to his lip suggested the term "gentleman" was to be considered loosely. "He claims it is an emergency."
"Mon Dieu . . . bring him here immediately, Aumont. Please."
The premonition of disaster that had struck Gabrielle with the knock on the door was now intensified tenfold. Her heart drummed so loudly she couldn't hear anything else, and she had to clutch the back of a chair to hold herself upright.
Aumont returned with the visitor, a man Gabrielle had never seen before. He was dressed in black, as a bourgeois, but his suit was of expensive material and he reeked of a heavy floral perfume. He had an oily complexion ravaged by the pox and tiny, darting, rabbitlike eyes.
"Madame la Vicomtesse . . ."He bowed awkwardly, and she noticed that he wore a cockade made of green chestnut leaves, the latest symbol of the revolution. "I am Jacques Marot. I fear I bring you grave news from Versailles—"
Gabrielle gasped. "Max!"
"I regret, madame ... the vicomte collapsed today during the assembly. Earlier he had been complaining of a terrible pain in his head. I understand an old wound . . . ?"
Gabrielle nodded automatically. Max still occasionally got headaches where the bullet had creased his skull, but lately he had assured her they were getting better.
"He's had a few lucid moments, madame," Jacques Marot was saying, "when he repeatedly asks for you and the boy."
"I must go to him at once! Aumont—"
Aumont, who was standing discreetly by the door in case Madame la Vicomtesse needed his services to chuck the visitor out, responded immediately. "I will have the carriage brought around, madame."
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