The Indispensable Wife

by Philippa Lodge

  “Shall we walk for a spell, ma chère?” Michel rose and held out his arm to Aurore.

  Dominique fell into step behind them as they strolled down the hill toward a small stream. They stopped on a slight rise, gazing at the camp in silence.

  Dominique could wait no longer. “What happened, where have you been, why are you not closed away in the convent as your father told you, and what really happened to your face?”

  Aurore sighed, her face as placid as it had been for years, not betraying anything. He wished suddenly that she would go back to being as easy to read as when she was a child. She had mastered the game of hiding her real emotions—completely proper for life at court—and he felt the loss like another arrow. The red scar on her temple made Dominique’s stomach churn. He would have vengeance.

  “We shall start at the beginning, then, Monsieur,” she said. “You have no doubt heard that your château-fort, your secondary residence, has been occupied by Xavier Poudrain and Yves Saint-Ange?”

  Dominique nodded, though he disagreed with how she said “your” and not “our.” And that it was their secondary residence. Though smaller in size and consequence than his seat, they had preferred the smaller, older keep, not just because it was closer to Paris but because of its intimacy, its history, and because Dom loved keeping his hand in with the guard training school.

  “Michel and Le Petit talked the bastards into letting them out of the stables where they were locked up. They spirited their wives and mothers out. One morning, when I was taking the air in the East Garden and walked close to the gate, they scooped me up and we rode away.” She waved one hand airily.

  Dominique glared suspiciously at Michel. “Why did the bastards let you out?”

  Michel glared back. “After the initial assault, they discovered that I am a bastard. I convinced them that I was only too happy to work for other bastards who have to make their way in the world.”

  That rocked Dominique back for a moment. “I have been turning this over in my head for months. Whose sons are they? No one seems to know who their fathers are, just that they are bastards.”

  Aurore shook her head. “Both were repudiated by their mothers’ husbands. It seems their anonymous father promised them a fortune.”

  “He seems to have made more promises than he could keep. It was his suggestion that they find properties where there is no heir and claim them,” said Michel. “He promised to support them by getting the king to condemn the rightful owners.”

  “Most fathers would buy them a place in the army or send them to the church,” said Dominique. “I certainly would.”

  Pain flashed across Aurore’s face, and he had to look away, feeling guiltier than ever about his affairs, which, though they had not resulted in bastard children, had irrevocably damaged her heart.

  “So Xavier Poudrain and Yves Saint-Ange had heard I was a bastard and were sure I supported their takeover. I heard what they did to Aurore. I knew I could use my freedom to free her.”

  Dominique nodded sharply, his neck stiff with outrage. “Why were you loyal, Michel? You were due more than you have, since your father is said to be noble. You should have at least had the education of a gentleman and a commission in the army. Maybe even a small property.”

  There was a long silence. Aurore carried on a silent exchange with Michel, their closeness apparent in their facial expressions.

  Finally, Aurore spoke. “Michel’s father has provided for him as best he can with his limited means. He has four legitimate sons and had to provide a large dowry for his daughter. Most of his property is entailed to his eldest, the second son has been promised the only remaining property, even though he will inherit a factory through his wife. Michel and his mother were protected. Michel refused the army because he wanted to stay at the château.”

  Much like Aurore’s family. “Why, though? I was never more than a distant friend to you and your mother, nor was my father.” What if Michel is my half-brother? Why didn’t my father tell me?

  “My father visited me there. When Aurore married you, I wished to stay near her.” Michel smiled fondly at Aurore.

  “You were how old? Twelve? When she married me?” Dominique felt a spurt of jealousy over the close friendship between his wife and this boy.

  “Thirteen. Other than my mother, Aurore was my closest friend. She watched over me when I was a baby, when my father’s wife sent my mother away. Aurore always came to see me and brought me gifts, even though she didn’t know the truth,” Michel said.

  Dominique looked at the two of them closely. They both stared back with wide, mocking eyes. The same light brown eyes as his closest friend, Cédric, and as their father, the Baron de la Brosse. Their mouths quirked in the same manner.

  Michel was Aurore’s brother.

  Aurore giggled and clapped her hands once. “It’s all right, chéri. I never realized either. Not until we were on the road and I asked why he had saved me. Even then I had to wonder why, when our father had not done much for him or acknowledged him.”

  Dominique looked into Aurore’s face. “Your mother.”

  Aurore’s lips turned down and her eyes widened in sorrow. As with most things that made Aurore sad, it was her mother’s fault. When it wasn’t Dom’s fault, that is. He cringed at that thought. He had thought the baronesse beautiful when he was a boy, but her cold, sneering ways and cabal of judgmental, treacherous friends had quickly soured her appeal. Once he had understood how badly she treated all of her children, especially her only daughter, he had decided she was not beautiful at all.

  Aurore sighed. “Maman wouldn’t countenance it. When he was sent away when he was three, I didn’t just think he was gone; I thought my mother had killed him because she was so angry. I thought she would kill me, too.”

  Aurore turned and strode back to the little encampment, tugging at her odd wimple. Dominique’s heart broke for the little girl he remembered so vividly, singing and dancing, loving and being loved by her father and brothers—even this illegitimate half-brother—but not by her mother. He did not deserve her if he could not give her the outpouring of love she needed.

  ****

  Aurore helped pack the troupe’s cookware and supplies. She was pleased to see that Dominique deferred to Michel’s weeks of experience with taking down the tents and packing the carts. He tried to hide the weakness in his left arm by lifting and carrying as much as any other man, but she watched him carefully and saw him wince and rub at his bicep.

  Not that she was looking closely at him, the faithless scoundrel. Or that she was worried about his injury. No, she just wondered about his arm dispassionately. As one would with a mere acquaintance. She sighed as she watched the way his rough breeches tightened against his leg muscles. She shivered and reminded herself that no, she was never going to desire anyone ever again.

  After they played and sang again, they climbed into the wagons. Dominique strode back toward the market village. Good riddance, even though she wanted to cry. He hadn’t bade her goodbye or asked her to return to her family, much less asked her to stay with him.

  Her heart began to beat again when he met them just outside the village, astride a pitiful-looking gray horse that moved well. An aristocrat would never ride something that ugly. A horseman would salivate over the horse’s movement. She narrowed her eyes and thought it might be a horse her father’s messengers rode. She remembered something quite like it cantering through the gates of the château.

  He rode at the side of her wagon, apparently meaning to continue their earlier conversation, but she covered herself with a thin blanket to keep off the evening sun and feigned sleep. She peeked as Michel said something to Dominique about the troupe and their itinerary. She could tell that Dom was burning to know everything.

  They changed course twice and stopped for the night, as they often did, in an open field a good distance from any town.

  After she and the other women heated soup, they sat to eat, bowls perched on their knees. Miche
l sat on one side of her and Dominique on the other, but she did her best to ignore them both. Really, Michel didn’t need to seem so happy to see the comte, did he? Petit le Petit, especially, seemed eager to please his former master. Dom was still the young man’s master, unless Dominique truly lost his title. She couldn’t imagine that the king would actually give the properties to the ones who… She shook her head and closed her eyes to force the two bastards from her mind.

  “But Audrienne shakes her head, Dario,” said Michel. “Perhaps she doesn’t want to hear more about our youthful exploits.”

  She looked up at him with surprise. “I am sorry. I was reflecting on something else. Do go on.”

  “No, your lovely wife is correct, and we should make more general conversation for her sake,” said Dominique.

  “Don’t stop.” Aurore stood with her half-finished soup. “I shall help with the supper things.”

  She strode away purposefully but couldn’t help noticing the silence she left behind. She didn’t care if her husband’s servants and some rough travelers thought she was rude, did she? Michel knew her better than anyone and would still love her. Dom was likely to find a way to annul their marriage once he knew what had happened to her. There were no children who would be bastardized if he were to find a way to divorce her. She ducked behind a tent for a moment to take a deep breath and wipe away tears.

  Her fingers itched to practice with her knife, or at least stab at Michel with a stick. She shivered. She would never really hurt anyone, but the short knife she carried in her skirt pocket gave her the illusion of safety. It also was a bad temptation to hurt someone when she got angry. A lady should never get angry.

  Chapter Four

  Dominique told Le Petit and Michel he would take the second watch, the one that ran in the middle of the night and disrupted sleep the most. He hadn’t slept much for two months anyway, partly from the discomfort of sleeping on the ground, partly from elevated alertness as a lone traveler, and mostly from his anxiety for his lands, his title, and his wife. Aurore was the key to everything else. He closed his eyes against the strain of watching in the pitch black of a moonless night. Aurore and her brothers and father were his family. Aurore supervised his lands and people, enchanted everyone at home and at court, and wished for children. Their goals were aligned. Surely she wanted the lands back as much as he did. And revenge. The price of his in-laws’ loyalty was her return. Over the last two months of solitary wandering, Dom had realized that they were right.

  Dominique tossed his blankets near the tent his wife was sharing with her half-brother. He still felt a twinge of jealousy for the closeness between the two. No, the jealousy sprang more from how Michel had been in the right place to rescue Aurore, while Dominique had been far away at Versailles, unable to rise from bed. So now Aurore trusted a bastard half-brother more than she trusted her husband.

  Dom wanted to be the one who saved his wife. This realization shook him. He had leaned on Aurore and her family for his entrée at court. They were all the family he had. From now on, he would be Aurore’s support. If anything else happened to her, he would rescue her. He grunted derisively at the fairy tale he was writing in his head.

  Dominique looked around. Everyone else had retired. The smell of dew rose thickly. He heard someone grunting and a woman giggling as they made love in one of the tents. He moved his pallet a little closer to Aurore’s tent to sleep until his watch came. Several minutes passed as he lay wide awake before scratching the fabric of the tent. “Aurore?”

  He heard a rustle inside and then, “Dominique?”

  “Oui, c’est moi. Did I wake you?”

  “No.”

  He shifted under his blanket, not sure what he would say now. He finally whispered, “Why didn’t you come and find me in Versailles? When you and Michel escaped?”

  She was silent for a time, and then she lifted the edge of the tent and peeked out. “They told me you were going to die. Then when I was at my father’s, we heard you were being watched.”

  “Who told you I would die?”

  “The men who took the château-fort,” she whispered. “They told me you were to be killed that same day and that you were surely dead and they were going to hold me hostage in case you escaped.”

  “Hostage.” He clenched his fists.

  She shushed him. “They kept me locked up for two days.”

  “And then you escaped?”

  “No. It was later, when Michel had won their trust. It was two weeks, I think,” she said.

  “So they let you out after two days?”

  He heard her sigh. “I did not want to tell you this.”

  “Tell me what?”

  “It feels as though I am in the confessional, speaking to you through this tiny gap.”

  “Then tell me, ma fille, of your sins,” he said, imitating the parish priest.

  She gasped and dropped the edge of the tent. He shifted closer and lifted it slightly to peer in.

  All he could see was darkness.

  “Aurore? Please. Tell me what happened. I have to know.”

  When she didn’t respond, he said, “I have spent weeks searching for you, thinking at first you must be with your family or mine. I looked in all the convents, until Cédric wrote me a month ago that you were traveling with a minstrel troupe. It is only by luck I found you at all. I wrote to the king to deny that I was plotting against him. I wrote to Mademoiselle de la Baume le Blanc, as well, even though she seems to be losing influence.” He flinched to say the name of Louis XIV’s official mistress. He had never liked her, though Aurore held her in some affection.

  “Does Madame de Montespan like you?” said Aurore, naming the lady who was openly angling to be the king’s next official mistress.

  Dominique chuckled. “I hardly know her. I was hoping that Mademoiselle de la Baume le Blanc was enough your friend to help.”

  Dom’s eyes were adjusting to the darkness in the tent, and he watched Aurore’s silhouette as she rolled to her back. “She is losing influence. She has lost three babies and Philippe is sickly. She is enceinte with another, but His Highness is said to be disgusted with her weeping.”

  Dom thought he had heard that her baby, Philippe, had died also, but he didn’t want to be the one who told Aurore. He listened to her breathe for a moment, then coughed to clear the dread from his throat. “Tell me, Aurore, mon âme. Tell me what happened.”

  She sighed, and he saw a flash of white as she turned her face toward him. “They raped me. They branded me.”

  “Branded?” His whisper squeaked with fury. Her father had said she might have been raped, but branded?

  Her voice was calm as she said, “On my hip and on my forehead. That is why I wear the cap. When I started to bleed, when I lost the baby, I…I went a bit insane. I heated a spoon and used it to ruin the brand on my head. I fainted, which is how I cut my face.”

  She was silent after that as he struggled with his urge to vomit.

  “My mother told me that since I haven’t given you children and now I have been used by other men and am scarred and ugly, you would annul our marriage.”

  Even though the baronesse had said as much to him, too, it was like a punch to his stomach. “Oh, no, Aurore. Why do you think I came after you?”

  “I didn’t know until today that you had really come after me.” Her voice rose angrily. “Cédric wrote a lot about the suspicion of treason, but not about where you were. I was just asking Michel yesterday if he thought it would be safe to go to my father to hide, because we are running out of money. We let the troupe keep the money from the shows. If we asked for part of the income they might mutiny, even though some of the money should be ours by rights, since I sing and Marie-France cooks so well, and Michel helps everyone, and he and Petit keep watch at night. If we leave, they won’t… No, that’s not true. Elisabet has a lovely voice. We’ve sung together sometimes, and I think she is jealous of me, though, truly, I should be jealous of her.”

&nbs
p; “Aurore, don’t chatter,” he said.

  She whimpered.

  “We will find a way to retake the château. The king has set a guard at our main residence, so that is safe for now. I have to speak with the king, though. He will have to believe that I am not like my father, who supported the Fronde rebellion. I have spent more than half of every year at court since I became comte. I was one of those chosen to be his friends. He knows me. The king hires many of the guards whom we train and half of his musketeers have come through our school at one time or another. Even so, I had several men with me at court and left the best at the château. And as you found out, as I found out as well, it is not enough. To my eternal regret, it is not enough.”

  She squeezed his hand.

  “Why did you not go straight to a convent, Aurore? If you thought you were disgraced…”

  “That was my intention when I left my father. When I got to Chaillot—that’s the nunnery that Louise de la Baume le Blanc went to once, did you know? When she was convinced Louis was going to reject her. They take in women who are not nuns, you know. I stood outside the gate and realized that it was possible that Poudrain and Saint-Ange had sisters there, if their father had more children. I did not feel safe.”

  There was a long silence as Dominique considered that she might have been right. He wondered if the nuns at the cloisters he had visited in his search for her had reported back to the bastards. Or to the king.

  Before he could say so, she said, “The bastards told me you were dead or would be soon. Cédric told me you were locked in your rooms in Versailles after losing an arm.”

  Dominique sighed. “I was nicked with a bolt from a crossbow. Pâques lost an arm; his bone was shattered. It only scraped me.”

  Aurore moaned.

  “We both fell to the ground. Le Fèvre held me down in case another bolt came. No one saw who shot the crossbow. There were ladies fainting and a swarm of people running. Le Fèvre tied a tourniquet on each of us, so he was drenched in blood. Pâques and I were both carried back to our lodgings. One arm was amputated and two men were near death.